Bacteria-map

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Gerd
Posts: 152
Joined: Sat Aug 05, 2006 3:56 pm
Location: Duesseldorf, Germany

Bacteria-map

Post by Gerd »

Image

on the surface of freshwater samples often occurs a flower of bacteria.
Under the fluorescence microscope with blue excitation and
stained with Acridin-Orange the masses of bacteria form a
map-like arrangement of cells with different fluorescence colors.
Magnification about 1000x.
Thanks for looking,

Gerd

Donw
Posts: 75
Joined: Tue Jul 26, 2011 2:05 am
Location: Seattle

Wow!

Post by Donw »

And I thought they looked cool in DF.

Does either the stain or the UV kill the little goners?

Don

Gerd
Posts: 152
Joined: Sat Aug 05, 2006 3:56 pm
Location: Duesseldorf, Germany

Post by Gerd »

Hi Don,
neither the stain nor the blue light, these are living ones.
You use the Acridinorange in very high dilutions, so the concentration is
not toxic for many water organisms like ciliates too.
Thanks,
Gerd

bromodomain
Posts: 156
Joined: Sun Jan 02, 2011 11:50 am

Post by bromodomain »

What determines the fluorescence profile of the bacteria? Is this some sort of live-dead stain?

arturoag75
Posts: 1600
Joined: Fri Feb 05, 2010 1:05 am
Location: italy
Contact:

Post by arturoag75 »

Very nice effect! :D
arturo

Franz Neidl
Posts: 747
Joined: Wed Jan 14, 2009 11:59 am
Location: Italy

Post by Franz Neidl »

Hello Gerd,

congratulations for your picture! The Neuston is very interesting. Did you take the sample with a "swimming" cover glass?

Franz

Gerd
Posts: 152
Joined: Sat Aug 05, 2006 3:56 pm
Location: Duesseldorf, Germany

Post by Gerd »

Thanks all for the kind comments.
@ bromodomain: you can determine living from dead bacteria cells,
if it is the same genus in the sample and if you have constant, known pH conditions.
In this case, living cell have green, dead ones red fluorescence.
In a water sample you normally have lots of different bacteria and you do not know
the pH conditions. The emitted colour spectrum can be very different, depending on the genus.
So i think, the red ones are a different genus from the green ones in this sample.

@Franz: yes, i put some coverglasses onto the water surface and picked them
again to put them onto a slide with the stain.
Thanks,
Gerd

Kanesha
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Jan 02, 2012 9:08 am

Post by Kanesha »

This is very interesting indeed! I recently tried the same experiment at home with my microscope. At first everything was looking a little blurry, and I was able to make everything out. Then I put on my contact lenses, and suddenly there it was clear as day! I had not realized until then how important my contacts really are to me. Thank you very much for sharing this, the photos look great!

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