{"title":"Thermus thermophilus polyploid cells directly imaged by X-ray laser diffraction.","authors":"Akihiro Suzuki, Toshiyuki Moriya, Tairo Oshima, Ying Yang, Yoshiya Niida, Kensuke Tono, Makina Yabashi, Tetsuya Ishikawa, Yasumasa Joti, Yoshinori Nishino, Yoshitaka Bessho","doi":"10.2323/jgam.2023.06.002","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Thermus thermophilus is reportedly polyploid and carries four to five identical genome copies per cell, based on molecular biological experiments. To directly detect polyploidy in this bacterium, we performed live cell imaging by X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) diffraction and observed its internal structures. The use of femtosecond XFEL pulses enables snapshots of live, undamaged cells. For successful XFEL imaging, we developed a bacterial culture method using a starch- and casein-rich medium that produces a predominance of rod-shaped cells shorter than the focused XFEL beam size, which is slightly smaller than 2 µm. When cultured in the developed medium, the length of T. thermophilus cells, which is typically ~4 µm, was less than half its usual length. We placed living cells in a micro-liquid enclosure array and successively exposed each enclosure to a single XFEL pulse. A cell image was successfully obtained by the coherent diffractive imaging technique with iterative phase retrieval calculations. The reconstructed cell image revealed five peaks, which are most likely to be nucleoids, arranged in a row in the polyploid cell without gaps. This study demonstrates that XFELs offer a novel approach for visualizing the internal nanostructures of living, micrometer-sized, polyploid bacterial cells.</p>","PeriodicalId":15842,"journal":{"name":"Journal of General and Applied Microbiology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8000,"publicationDate":"2023-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of General and Applied Microbiology","FirstCategoryId":"99","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.2323/jgam.2023.06.002","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2023/6/10 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"BIOTECHNOLOGY & APPLIED MICROBIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Thermus thermophilus is reportedly polyploid and carries four to five identical genome copies per cell, based on molecular biological experiments. To directly detect polyploidy in this bacterium, we performed live cell imaging by X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) diffraction and observed its internal structures. The use of femtosecond XFEL pulses enables snapshots of live, undamaged cells. For successful XFEL imaging, we developed a bacterial culture method using a starch- and casein-rich medium that produces a predominance of rod-shaped cells shorter than the focused XFEL beam size, which is slightly smaller than 2 µm. When cultured in the developed medium, the length of T. thermophilus cells, which is typically ~4 µm, was less than half its usual length. We placed living cells in a micro-liquid enclosure array and successively exposed each enclosure to a single XFEL pulse. A cell image was successfully obtained by the coherent diffractive imaging technique with iterative phase retrieval calculations. The reconstructed cell image revealed five peaks, which are most likely to be nucleoids, arranged in a row in the polyploid cell without gaps. This study demonstrates that XFELs offer a novel approach for visualizing the internal nanostructures of living, micrometer-sized, polyploid bacterial cells.
期刊介绍:
JGAM is going to publish scientific reports containing novel and significant microbiological findings, which are mainly devoted to the following categories: Antibiotics and Secondary Metabolites; Biotechnology and Metabolic Engineering; Developmental Microbiology; Environmental Microbiology and Bioremediation; Enzymology; Eukaryotic Microbiology; Evolution and Phylogenetics; Genome Integrity and Plasticity; Microalgae and Photosynthesis; Microbiology for Food; Molecular Genetics; Physiology and Cell Surface; Synthetic and Systems Microbiology.