News
25.11.2021The Cytometry and the Electron Cryomicroscopy Units of the CCiTUB have collaborated in a study of the characterization of bacterial membrane vesicles.
TheCytometry and the Electron Cryomicroscopy Units of the CCiTUB have collaborated with researchers from the Department of Biology, Health and Environment of the University of Barcelona in a study of characterization of bacterial membrane vesicles and the result has been published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology.
This study has combined Flow Cytometry, Transmission Electron Microscopy and Cryo-Electron Transmission Microscopy analysis to determine the quantity and types of membrane vesicles (MV) that the vesiculant bacterial model Shewanella vesiculosa M7T secrets during its different growth phases. The interest of their characterization is based on their possible applications within the fields of Biology and Biotechnology. MVs could be applied as vaccines, drug delivery systems, or enzyme catalysis.
It has been observed that the secretion of MV increases during the transition from the late exponential phase to the stationary phase and that the explosive lysis of cells mediated by active phages increases the heterogeneity of single and double-layer MVs. The explosive lysis mechanism has been corroborated by sequenciation, since DNA fragments of the complete bacterial genome have been detected. Furthermore, it has been confirmed that the structure of double-layer MVs derived from the explosive lysis of cells and their biogenesis are different from those outer-inner membrane vesicles (O-IMV) previously described by the group, so that the name explosive O-IMV (EO-IMV) has been proposed to differentiate them. It is remarkable that for the first time it has been used Flow Cytometric sorting and analysis by Cryo-Electron Transmission Microscopy to separate bacterial MVs according to their nucleic acids content.
* Image of the paper: Baeza N, Delgado L, Comas J, Mercade E. Phage-Mediated Explosive Cell Lysis Induces the Formation of a Different Type of O-IMV in Shewanella vesiculosa M7T. Front Microbiol. 2021 Oct 8;12:713669. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2021.713669. PMID: 34690958; PMCID: PMC8529241.