Sharpest ever images of living bacteria reveal unexpected membrane structure - CNET

The images are so clear that scientists can see proteins on a bacterium's outer membrane.

This image of a live Escherichia Coli bacterium reveals the structure of its outer membrane.

In a study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the US and UK provide images of the rod-shaped bacterium Escherichia Coli, which is commonly found in our gastrointestinal tracts and helps digest food.

While regular microscopes can see the bacteria as clumps of rods scattered all across a glass slide, they don't give us a good idea of the structure of a bacterium's body and the outer membrane that protects it from our drugs. .

"The outer membrane is a formidable barrier against antibiotics and is an important factor in making infectious bacteria resistant to medical treatment," Bart Hoogenboom, a nanotechnologist at University College London and co-author on the paper, said in a press release.

Outer membranes are present on what's known as "gram-negative" bacteria, like E coli, and not gram-positive bacteria, like Staphylococcus.