Morphologic variations in bacteria under stress conditions: near-field optical studies |
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Authors: | Cefalì E Patanè S Arena A Saitta G Guglielmino S Cappello S Nicolò M Allegrini M |
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Affiliation: | INFM and Department of Physics, University of Messina, Messina, Italy. |
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Abstract: | The morphologic and structural variations suffered by cells of a population of Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 27853 under stress conditions were investigated by using scanning near-field optical microscopy. The analysis of the images, supported by microbiological data, showed that the bacteria evolved from the initial distribution of rod-shaped cells of standard size to a population with structural and morphologic modifications. The detection of variations in the optical reflectivity over a subwavelength scale (< or = 100 nm), combined with the concurrently acquired topographical signal, allowed the visualisation of rod-shaped bacteria going towards a lytic process and entire "U"-shaped cells. In the latter cells, which derived from a morphology refolding of rod bacteria, cellular matter seemed to rearrange itself to attain a coccoid stress resistant form, responsible for the residual viability of the population. |
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Keywords: | near‐field optical microscopy stress‐induced morphology variation |
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