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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2014 Mar 20.
Published in final edited form as: Nat Commun. 2014 Mar 7;5:3442. doi: 10.1038/ncomms4442

Figure 6. Membrane fluidity increases in the absence of MreB.

Figure 6

(a) Overall membrane fluidity of several cytoskeletal mutant strains was measured as Laurdan generalised polarisation (GP) of logarithmically growing B. subtilis cells. As a positive control, an increase in fluidity (= decrease in Laurdan GP) was established by adding the membrane fluidizer benzyl alcohol (BA; 30 mM) to wild type cells. The diagram depicts the average values and standard deviation of 3 independent measurements. (b) Ratios between chain lengths of the major fatty acids (C17 and C15), and ratios between the iso and anteiso forms of fatty acids are depicted for the different strains (see supplementary table 1 for the detailed composition). High C17/C15 or high iso/anteiso -ratios indicate a reduced fluidity. The diagram depicts the average values and standard deviation of 2 independent analyses. Strains used: B. subtilis 168 (wild type), 4264 (ΔrsgI), 3481 (ΔmreC), 4277 (ΔmreB, Δmbl, ΔmreBH, ΔrsgI).