Figure 4

Growth and fermentation analysis of various C. thermocellum mutants with Avicel as carbon source. Panels (A, B, C) show results for CipA-truncation mutants and panels (D, E, F) show results for secondary scaffoldin disruption mutants. (A, D) cell growth represented by the abundance of total protein in bacterial pellets; (B, E) abundance of extracellular protein in the cell culture broth supernatant after pelleting of bacteria; (C, F) Avicel consumption in mM glucose equivalents per h. Average values and standard deviations are indicated by error bars and calculated for three replicates for each strain. For measurement of total cell protein, equal amounts of cell culture (0.2 mL) from each of the three replicate experiments were combined before the measurement. The data were fit to a logarithmic growth curve based on a four-parameter equation (A, B, D, E) or to a sigmoidal curve based on a five-parameter Richards equation [32](C, F).