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  • Review Article
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Optical and force nanoscopy in microbiology

Nature Microbiology volume 1, Article number: 16186 (2016) Cite this article

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Abstract

Microbial cells have developed sophisticated multicomponent structures and machineries to govern basic cellular processes, such as chromosome segregation, gene expression, cell division, mechanosensing, cell adhesion and biofilm formation. Because of the small cell sizes, subcellular structures have long been difficult to visualize using diffraction-limited light microscopy. During the last three decades, optical and force nanoscopy techniques have been developed to probe intracellular and extracellular structures with unprecedented resolutions, enabling researchers to study their organization, dynamics and interactions in individual cells, at the single-molecule level, from the inside out, and all the way up to cell–cell interactions in microbial communities. In this Review, we discuss the principles, advantages and limitations of the main optical and force nanoscopy techniques available in microbiology, and we highlight some outstanding questions that these new tools may help to answer.

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Figure 1: Probing the microbial cell from the inside out using nanoscopy.
Figure 2: Spatial organization of bacterial nucleoid.
Figure 3: Spatial distribution and dynamics of DNA-associated machineries.
Figure 4: Intracellular location and morphology of cytoskeletal structures.
Figure 5: Imaging the structure and dynamics of single proteins in bacterial membranes.
Figure 6: The matrix revolutions, dissecting the binding mechanisms of biofilm matrices.

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Acknowledgements

Work in the Dufrêne team was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 693630), the National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS), the FNRS-WELBIO (grant no. WELBIO-CR-2015A-05), the Federal Office for Scientific, Technical and Cultural Affairs (Interuniversity Poles of Attraction Programme), and the Research Department of the Communauté française de Belgique (Concerted research action). Y.F.D. is Research Director at the FNRS. Work in the Xiao lab is supported by National Institute of Health General Medicines 1R01GM086447-06, 1R01GM112008-01 (Multi-PI), National Science Foundation grant EAGER MCB1019000. Y.F.D. and J.X. thank Carla Coltharp and Xinxing Yang for their critical reading and suggestions of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biophysics & Biophysical Chemistry, The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, 725 N. Wolfe Street, Baltimore, 21212, Maryland, USA

    Jie Xiao

  2. Institute of Life Sciences, Université catholique de Louvain, Croix du Sud, 4-5, bte L7.07.06., Louvain-la-Neuve, B-1348, Belgium

    Yves F. Dufrêne

  3. Walloon Excellence in Life sciences and Biotechnology (WELBIO), Belgium

    Yves F. Dufrêne

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  1. Jie Xiao
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Correspondence to Jie Xiao or Yves F. Dufrêne.

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Xiao, J., Dufrêne, Y. Optical and force nanoscopy in microbiology. Nat Microbiol 1, 16186 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmicrobiol.2016.186

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