Fig. 1.

A comparison between the approach curves collected for untreated E. coli A9 cells and treated ones with ampicillin for 3 and 8 h at MIC, respectively. Each curve represents the average of five individual curves. Red lines represent the fits of the steric model to the experimental symbolic data. For the untreated data, L₀ and Γ were 286 ± 140 nm and 11035 ± 1670 μm⁻² respectively, r² = 0.99. For the treated data, L₀ and ϖ were 403 ± 95 nm and 29496 ± 7880 μm⁻² for 3 h exposure respectively, r² = 0.97. The L₀ and Γ for 8 h exposure was 267 ± 51 nm and 14519 ± 2001 μm⁻² respectively, r² = 1.00. (B) A schematic representation of the conformations of the bacterial surface biopolymers showing the biopolymer brush thickness (L₀, nm) and the grafting density (Γ, μm⁻²) respectively. Different colors used for biopolymer chains are meant to represent the heterogeity in these biopolymers. Steric model results for individual cells at different conditions are reported in Table 1a. Figures like A for all strains and treatments are provided in the supporting material Fig. S2A-C. Fig. 1B is adopted from Abu-Lail et al. (2003) (Abu-Lail, 2003) with modifications. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)