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Swimming Motility Assays of Spiroplasma

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Bacterial and Archaeal Motility

Part of the book series: Methods in Molecular Biology ((MIMB,volume 2646))

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Abstract

Spiroplasma swim in liquids without the use of the bacterial flagella. This small helical bacterium propels itself by generating kinks that travel down the cell body. The kink translation is unidirectional, from the leading pole to the lagging pole, during cell swimming in viscous environments. This protocol describes a swimming motility assay of Spiroplasma eriocheiris for visualizing kink translations of the absolute handedness of the body helix with optical microscopy.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported in part by KAKENHI (16H06230, 20H05543, 21 K07020, 22H05066) to DN.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Engineering Science, Graduate School of Informatics and Engineering, The University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan

    Daisuke Nakane

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  1. Daisuke Nakane
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Correspondence to Daisuke Nakane .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka, Japan

    Tohru Minamino

  2. Graduate School of Science, Osaka Metropolitan University, Osaka, Japan

    Makoto Miyata

  3. Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka, Japan

    Keiichi Namba

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© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature

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Nakane, D. (2023). Swimming Motility Assays of Spiroplasma. In: Minamino, T., Miyata, M., Namba, K. (eds) Bacterial and Archaeal Motility. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2646. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-3060-0_31

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-3060-0_31

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  • Publisher Name: Humana, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-0716-3059-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-0716-3060-0

  • eBook Packages: Springer Protocols

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