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. 2017 Sep 22;7:12151. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-12472-7

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© The Author(s) 2017

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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Pilin antigenic variation governs colony dynamics. (a–d) A droplet of differentially labeled strains was inoculated onto an agar plate and colonies were grown for 48 h. Typical colonies of (a) pilin antigenic variation deficient green recA (Ng167) and red recA (Ng168), and (b) pilin antigenic variation deficient green ∆G4 (Ng169) and red ΔG4 (Ng170). (c) Fractions of non-piliated cells in 48 h colony determined by colony morphology. Grey: wt, orange: recA _ind, green: ΔG4. N > 150 colonies for each condition. Mean and standard error from three independent experiments. (d) Number of sectors in the area of outgrowth (N > 30 colonies for each condition. Error bars represent standard deviation). Distributions of numbers are significantly different for all pairs with P < 10⁻⁴ (t-test). (e) Effect of pilin antigenic variation on competition. A droplet containing a mix of green wt (Ng165) and antigenic variation deficient red ΔG4 (Ng170) bacteria was applied to an agar plate. The colony was imaged using fluorescence microscopy after 48 h. Scale bars: 500 µm.