Fig. 5. PAO1 RSCVs have increased fitness relative to the ancestral PAO1.

PAO1 strains were competed against the ancestral parent tagged with lacZ for 48 hours in both biofilm (black) and planktonic (gray) conditions for 48 hours. Fitness of the competing strain was determined by calculating the selection rate (r). (A) Fitness of representative PAO1 wound isolates relative to the ancestral PAO1 strain. PAO1ΔwspF competed against the isogenic PAO1 parent was used as a representative wsp mutant instead of RSCV-44 due to the secondary SNP in pilQ in this isolate (table S1). N = 5. (B) To separate the contributions of the retS mutation and the presence of newly acquired prophage to the increased fitness phenotype, RSCV-5 containing the retS complementing plasmid (p-retS) and a PAO1 retS transposon mutant were completed against their parent PAO1 strains. N = 3. *P < 0.05 compared to the PAO1 pairwise competition (one-way ANOVA with Tukey’s post hoc test).