RESUMO
We present a dynamic laser speckle method to easily discriminate filamentous fungi from motile bacteria in soft surfaces, such as agar plate. The method allows the detection and discrimination between fungi and bacteria faster than with conventional techniques. The new procedure could be straightforwardly extended to different micro-organisms, as well as applied to biological and biomedical research, infected tissues analysis, and hospital water and wastewaters studies.
Assuntos
Interpretação de Imagem Assistida por Computador/métodos , Lasers , Reconhecimento Automatizado de Padrão/métodos , Phanerochaete/classificação , Phanerochaete/citologia , Pseudomonas/classificação , Pseudomonas/citologia , Diagnóstico Diferencial , Fungos , Aumento da Imagem/métodos , Iluminação/métodos , Reprodutibilidade dos Testes , Sensibilidade e EspecificidadeRESUMO
Chemotaxis has a meaningful role in several fields, such as microbial physiology, medicine and biotechnology. We present a new application of dynamic laser speckle (or biospeckle) to detect different degrees of bacterial motility during chemotactic response experiments. Encouraging results showed different bacterial dynamic responses due to differences in the hardness of the support in the swarming plates. We compare this method to a conventional technique that uses white light. Both methods showed to be analogous and, in some cases, complementary. The results suggest that biospeckle processed images can be used as an alternative method to evaluate bacterial chemotactic response and can supply additional information about the bacterial motility in different areas of the swarm plate assay that might be useful for biological analysis.
