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Intracellular morphological changes in Staphylococcus aureus induced by treatment with sodium hypochlorite

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Abstract

Sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl) is commonly used as a disinfectant; however, its bactericidal mechanism has not yet been clarified. In the present study, the bactericidal mechanism of NaOCl was examined using microscopy and gel electrophoresis techniques with Staphylococcus aureus strain 209P. S. aureus cells treated with 500 and 1000 ppm NaOCl for 5 and 15 min were observed by SEM and TEM. SEM images of the bacterial cells treated with NaOCl showed an irregular surface, with cells being partially invaginated. TEM images of the bacterial cells showed cytoplasmic alterations, accompanied by a partially irregular cellular surface. Under a fluorescence microscope, we clearly observed fluorescence quenching in the 1000 ppm NaOCl-treated cells. Based on these observations, which indicated that NaOCl damaged chromosomal DNA, we next extracted chromosomal DNA from bacterial cells treated with NaOCl and performed agarose gel electrophoresis. Chromosomal DNA was absent in the DNA sample from the bacterial cells treated with 500 ppm NaOCl. From these biochemical results, it was strongly suggested that NaOCl degrades the chromosomal DNA of S. aureus. We consider that the morphological changes in the cytoplasm induced by NaOCl may be related to NaOCl-induced degradation of S. aureus chromosomal DNA.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by research project Grants, 25-60 and 26-7, from Kawasaki Medical School. We thank Nobuaki Matsuda and Keiko Isoda from the Bioimaging Research Unit (Kawasaki Medical School) for their excellent technical assistance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Health Science, Kawasaki University of Medical Welfare, 288 Matsushima, Kurashiki, Okayama, 701-0193, Japan

    Shiori Ujimine & Sakuo Yamada

  2. Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Denki University, Hatoyama, Saitama, 350-0394, Japan

    Shigenobu Tone

  3. Department of Microbiology, Kawasaki Medical School, 577 Matsushima, Kurashiki, Okayama, 701-0192, Japan

    Mineki Saito & Sakuo Yamada

Authors
  1. Shiori Ujimine
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  2. Shigenobu Tone
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  3. Mineki Saito
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  4. Sakuo Yamada
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Correspondence to Shiori Ujimine.

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Conflict of interest

S Yamada has received technical consulting charges from Panasonic Corporation. The rest of the authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Ujimine, S., Tone, S., Saito, M. et al. Intracellular morphological changes in Staphylococcus aureus induced by treatment with sodium hypochlorite. Med Mol Morphol 50, 178–184 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00795-017-0159-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00795-017-0159-6

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