Fig. 3.

Number of cells surviving after 2 h and 8 h-long antibiotic treatments for the three switching strategies: constant (Const.), substrate-dependent (Sub.-dep.) and antibiotic-dependent (Ant.-dep.). Cells reverting to the susceptible state during treatments died quickly. The populations post-treatment were composed solely of persisters: (s + p)_{post-treatment} ≈ p_{post-treatment}. a_max is the maximum switching rate from the susceptible state to the non-growing persister state. b_max is the maximum switching rate from the persister state to the susceptible state