Abstract
Many bacterial species move toward favorable habitats. The flagellum is one of the most important machines required for the motility in solution and is conserved across a wide range of bacteria. The motility machinery is thought to function efficiently with a similar mechanism in a variety of environmental conditions, as many cells with similar machineries have been isolated from harsh environments. To understand the common mechanism and its diversity, microscopic examination of bacterial movements is a crucial step. Here, we describe a method to characterize the swimming motility of cells in extreme environmental conditions. This microscopy system enables acquisition of high-resolution images under high-pressure conditions. The temperature and oxygen concentration can also be manipulated. In addition, we also describe a method to track the movement of swimming cells using an ImageJ plugin. This enables characterization of the swimming motility of the selected cells.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Yoshie Harada and Takeharu Nagai for technical support. We thank Taishi Kasai and Tomofumi Sakai for reviewing the Image J plugin and for valuable comments. We acknowledge support from the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (Nos. JP15H01319 and JP16K04908), Takeda Science Foundation, Research Foundation for Opto-Science and Technology, and the Nakatani Foundation for advancement of measuring technologies in biomedical engineering (to M.N.). M.N. developed the microscope system; Y.A. developed the Image J plugin; M.N. and Y.A. wrote the manuscript.
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Nishiyama, M., Arai, Y. (2017). Tracking the Movement of a Single Prokaryotic Cell in Extreme Environmental Conditions. In: Minamino, T., Namba, K. (eds) The Bacterial Flagellum. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1593. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-6927-2_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-6927-2_13
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Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-6927-2
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