Figure 4.

Morphological changes of E. coli during heatshock. Scanning electron micrographs of bacterial cells grown in the chemostat culture at 37 °C 30 min before the temperature upshift (− 30 min sample) (A) and 40 h after the temperature upshift to 42 °C (B). Cell size distributions determined using flow cytometry analysis (C). Dotted and solid lines denote cells at 37 °C 30 min before the temperature upshift and 40 h after the shift to 42 °C, respectively. The vertical red line represents the longest 1% size of the -30 min sample, which was used as the threshold. The mean forward scatter height (FSC-H) on the X axis represents the length of the rod-shaped bacteria. Percentages of elongated cell size in the total cells are 1% for the − 30 min samples and 14.10% for 40 h samples.