Fig. 2

Projected dimensions and stereological properties. a Mean cell length (mean of sampling distribution of the mean, \(\mu _{\bar{x}}\)) profiles. Error bars show standard deviation of the sampling distribution of the mean. Means and standard deviations are weighted by sample size. A two-tailed Student’s t test at 5% significance was used for pairwise comparison of cell lengths. Significant p-values (above data points) are asterisked. The red trend line is to guide the eye and is not a regression model. The black trend line and black dotted lines show the average cell length over the duration of the experiment for the cells in the continuously diluted cultures \(\pm\, 1\) SEM, respectively. b PCC7942 cell width vs. cell length. c PCC7942 cell area vs. cell length. d PCC7942 cell surface-to-volume ratio vs. cell length. Plots b, c and d were plotted using data collected over the duration of the experiment from 2973 and 3636 cells from the continuously diluted and control cultures, respectively. The data were discretised by cell length into bins of 0.4 μm wide. Mean values were calculated from bins with at least 50 data points to produce the plot. Solid lines are regression models and dotted lines are 95\(\%\) confidence bounds