Our estimate is simplistic, however we were unable to find a reliable measurement of this parameter in the literature, and so we resorted to some simple extrapolations.
In the estimation of the Young’s modulus it is assumed that the bending resistance is due to the cell wall. I suspect that this is a very poor approximation, accounting for the two order of magnitude difference between the estimated and benchmark values of Y. It would seem that the resistance is controlled or at least influenced by additional factors such as protein expression (notably MreB) and osmotic pressure. If my intuition is wrong (I am not an expert on cell morphology), I would appreciate knowing why.