Observation of persister cell histories reveals diverse modes of survival in antibiotic persistence

Bacterial persistence is a phenomenon in which a small fraction of isogenic bacterial cells survives a lethal dose of antibiotics. Although the refractoriness of persistent cell populations has classically been attributed to the presence of growth-inactive cells generated prior to drug exposure, evidence is accumulating that actively growing cell fractions can also produce persister cells, depending on bacterial species, antibiotics, and culture conditions. However, the direct elucidation of survival modes, drug response diversity, and growth history dependence by single-cell observation is limited due to the extremely low frequencies of persisters. Here, we visualize the responses of more than 106 individual cells of wildtype Escherichia coli to lethal doses of antibiotics, sampling cells from different growth phases and culture media into a microfluidic device. We show that when cells sampled from exponentially growing cell populations in batch cultures were treated with ampicillin or..., , , # Data from: Observation of persister cell histories reveals diverse modes of survival in antibiotic persistence

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.s1rn8pkb1](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.s1rn8pkb1)

## Description of the data and file structure

**DataForDryad_Uploaded.zip**

The XLSX files in this folder with the names of the corresponding figures include the raw data and calculated numerical values for the plots. 

The folder \"Tracking_MF1_x100\" includes the code \"Tracking_MF1_x100.c\" and the data files for generating the plots of Figures 2C, 2D, 2G, and 2H. The subfolder \"Data_MF1_LBexp_Amp200_x100\" contains the following files:

* 190704_Results0103.xls and 190711_Results4001.xls : 

Each filename consists of a six-digit date (YYMMDD) before the underscore, indicating the observation date, and a four-digit microcolony location code after “Results.” Column A lists the index number of each registered cell. Column B includes a character string generated during processing, which is not...,