POL Scientific / JBM / Volume 4 / Issue 2 / DOI: 10.14440/jbm.2017.173
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Resolving biofilm topography by native scanning electron microscopy

Neta Raab1,2 Ido Bachelet1
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1 Augmanity, Rehovot, Israel
2 Faculty of Life Sciences, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
JBM 2017 , 4(2), 1;
Published: 25 April 2024
© 2017 by the author. Licensee POL Scientific, USA. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
Abstract

Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is a powerful tool for structural analysis, but it requires biological samples to undergo lengthy, chemically-complex multi-step preparation procedures, arguably altering some features in the sample. Here we report an ultra-rapid and chemical-free technique for visualizing bacterial biofilms at their native state. Our technique minimizes the time interval from culture to imaging to approximately 20 min, while producing high-resolution images that enable the detection of a variety of topographic features such as bacterial chains, and resolving cells from matrix. We analyzed images obtained from Bacillus subtilis biofilms, demonstrate the usefulness of this technique for multiple types of image analysis, and discuss its potential to be improved and adapted to other types of biological samples.

Keywords
biofilm
scanning electron microscopy
Bacillus subtilis
References

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Journal of Biological Methods, Electronic ISSN: 2326-9901 Print ISSN: TAB, Published by POL Scientific