Fig. 3

Colony size and size variation. a. Size distribution of the colonies on a single plate. The size differentiation of the E. coli colonies formed on a single LB agar plate is shown as an example. Fitting of the histogram to the Poisson distribution is indicated by the red curve. b. Boxplot of the mean values of the colony sizes. The sizes of the colonies formed on identical plates were evaluated, and the mean size of these colonies was calculated for each agar plate. The tiny circles and the crosses represent the mean sizes of colonies formed on the individual agar plates and the average of the mean sizes (on identical plates), respectively. Reg., Nutr. and Gen. indicate colony growth under regular conditions and in response to nutritional and genomic changes, respectively. The regular conditions and nutritional and genomic changes represent the wild-type strain growing on an LB agar plate, the wild-type strain growing on an M63 agar plate and the genome-reduced strain growing on an LB agar plate, respectively. c. Boxplot of the size variation of the colonies. The coefficient of variation (CV) of the colony size was calculated for each agar plate. The tiny circles and the crosses represent the CV of colony size on the individual agar plates and the average CV, respectively. Statistical significance is indicated. The data used for the boxplots could be found in Table S1