Supplemental materials and methods (cell lineage analysis, confocal laser scanning microscopy, measuring the in vitro stability of GFP, mathematical model for plasmid and production dynamics); movie descriptions; parameter values used in simulations of the mathematical model (Table S1); map of plasmid pKMMBm2 (Fig. S1); microcolony of growing B. megaterium WH321 (genomic ∆xylR) carrying the pKMMBm5 plasmid (Fig. S2); cell lineage tree after the analysis of Movie S3 (Fig. S3); analysis of GFP production and degradation by B. megaterium carrying pSSBm85 (Fig. S4); microcolony of B. megaterium carrying the pKMMBm2 plasmid, and confocal laser scanning microscopy showing that plasmids were located in the central part of each cell and were probably not bound to the membrane (Fig. S5); structure of the plasmid distribution model (Fig. S6).
PDF, 856K
Time-lapse microscopy, over a period of 5 h 25 min, showing a growing GFP-producing microcolony of B. megaterium carrying the pSSBm85 plasmid (Movie S1).
AVI, 6.7M
Time-lapse microscopy, over a period of 7 h 45 min, showing a growing GFP-producing microcolony of B. megaterium carrying the pKMMBm5 plasmid (Movie S2).
AVI, 7.8M
Two-channel time-lapse microscopy, over a period of 4 h 20 min, showing a growing microcolony of B. megaterium carrying the pKMMBm2 plasmid (Movie S3).
AVI, 7.6M
An edited movie, based on Movie S3, showing separated channels (Movie S4).
AVI, 6.3M
Two-channel time-lapse microscopy, over a period of 2 h, showing a growing microcolony of B. megaterium carrying the pKMMBm2 plasmid (Movie S5).
AVI, 557K