Fig 4. Unwrapping efficiency and chemotactic ability are impaired in straight cells.
Switching of motor rotation from CCW to CW usually results in filament unwrapping in the WT, but not in straight cells. During reversals, the wrapped filament of Δpgp1 cells will often peel away from the cell body, but fail to fully unwrap (red arrow) (A). In the straight cell background, filament unwrapping upon switching only occurs 26% of the time, compared to 69% in helical cells (B). An aerotaxis competition (C) between WT and Δpgp1 cells revealed that, in addition to reaching the O2-rich border (double-sided tape) first, the WT also formed a high density, persisting swarm at the border that left few stragglers behind (D and E). Scale bars in A equal to 2 μm. Fluorescence intensity signals in E are the average of three replicate experiments for each mutant.