Nucleoid as a helical ellipsoid with longitudinal high-density DNA regions.

A. A cartoon of E. coli cell with a curved nucleoid (dark grey). A curved centroids path, denoted by black line, emphasizes the curved shape of the nucleoid. The cartoon is based on a figure in [8]. B. Cross-sectioning of the E. coli nucleoid visualized by HU-mCherry. Fluorescence intensity is taken as a proxy for DNA density and is represented by blue to red in increasing order. Data were taken from [9].