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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2019 Jan 18.
Published in final edited form as: Nature. 2018 Jul 18;559(7715):617–621. doi: 10.1038/s41586-018-0344-3

Figure 3. The stiffness of turgid cells depends on outer-membrane integrity.

Figure 3

a) AFM measurements of cell stiffness versus time. One cell was treated with increasing EDTA concentrations (similar data for 4 treated, 2 untreated cells).

b) Mean cell stiffness versus EDTA concentration (n = 4 cells for each measurement). Error bars, ± 1 s.d. p-values: Student’s two-sided t-test, difference from untreated wild-type control. n.s.: not significant.

c) AFM measurements of cell stiffness under chemical or genetic perturbations (relative to untreated wild-type, n=7,4,3,13,8,7,7 cells). Δpal cells lysed under AFM. Error bars, ± 1 s.d. p-values: Student’s two-sided t-test, difference from untreated wild-type control. n.s.: not significant.

d) Microfluidic cell-bending assay.

e) Displacement versus axial length for untreated (blue dots, n = 300) and EDTA-treated (pink dots, n = 367) cells. Solid and dashed black lines, best fits of mechanical model used to calculate the bending rigidities.

f) Mean bending rigidities of untreated and EDTA-treated cells. Error bars, 95% confidence. p-value calculated from confidence intervals.