Abstract
The honeybee pathogen,Spiroplasma melliferum, growing on 1.2% agar medium, forms fried egg (umbonate) colonies surrounded by large numbers of satellite colonies. In liquid media, these helical, cell wall-free prokaryotes flex, twist, and rotate rapidly. A motility mutant was isolated as an umbonate colony without satellites after nitrous acid mutagenesis and an enrichment procedure with chemotaxis. The development of an efficient motility mutant enrichment procedure, easily applied to spiroplasmas, which is described here, will not only greatly expedite the accumulation of motility mutants, but will also be extremely useful for isolating chemotactic mutants.
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Cohen, A.J., Williamson, D.L. & Brink, P.R. A motility mutant ofSpiroplasma melliferum induced with nitrous acid. Current Microbiology 18, 219–222 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01570295
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01570295