Interference reflection microscopy shows novel insights to bacterial gliding motility

Rooney, Liam M. and Hoskisson, Paul A. and McConnell, Gail (2018) Interference reflection microscopy shows novel insights to bacterial gliding motility. In: EMBO Practical Course on Advanced Optical Microscopy for Cell Biology, 2018-04-04 - 2018-04-14, The Marine Biological Association.

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Abstract

The gliding motility of the Δ-proteobacterium, Myxococcus xanthus is used to facilitate either social or adventurous motility depending on the availability of nutrients in their environment. The size of bacteria limits our ability to use sectioning microscopy techniques, and so most studies on gliding motility use fluorescence-based techniques to focus on lateral ( x , y ) dynamics. We aim to use interference reflection microscopy (IRM) to visualise the axial motility dynamics in gliding cells to better understand their underlying gliding motility mechanisms.