Application of spherical substrate to observe bacterial motility machineries by Quick-Freeze-Replica Electron Microscopy.

3-D Structural information is essential to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of various biological machineries. Quick-Freeze Deep-Etch-Replica Electron Microscopy is a unique technique to give very high-contrast surface profiles of extra- and intra-cellular apparatuses that bear numerous cellular functions. Though the global architecture of those machineries is primarily required to understand their functional features, it is difficult or even impossible to depict side- or highly-oblique views of the same targets by usual goniometry, inasmuch as the objects (e.g. motile microorganisms) are placed on conventional flat substrates. We introduced silica-beads as an alternative substrate to solve such crucial issue. Elongated Flavobacterium and globular Mycoplasmas cells glided regularly along the bead's surface, similarly to those on a flat substrate. Quick-freeze replicas of those cells attached to the beads showed various views; side-, oblique- and frontal-views, enabling us to study not only global but potentially more detailed morphology of complicated architecture. Adhesion of the targets to the convex surface could give surplus merits to visualizing intriguing molecular assemblies within the cells, which is relevant to a variety of motility machinery of microorganisms.

[Present-day status of the problem and the prospects for the development of the theory of the role of L-form bacteria and Mycoplasma in human urological diseases]. / Sovremennoe sostoianie voprosa i perspektivy razvitiia ucheniia o roli L-form bakterii i mikoplazm pri urologicheskikh zabolevaniiakh cheloveka

The authors consider the current state of the problem and personal data on the role of L-forms of bacteria and mycoplasma in human infectious pathology. L-forms of bacteria were isolated from the urine in 10% of the patients suffering from pyelonephritis and mycoplasmae--in over one third of all the patients both with pyelonephritis and with cystites and prostatitis. Some of the isolated strains of mycoplasmae produced a cytopathogenic effect on the cell cultures, whereas the rest caused a latent infection. Drug sensitivity determined to ten antibacterial preparations with a wide range of action differed in strains of the same species. The efficacy of treatment and the prospects of microbiological studies in cases with atypical and latent courses of inflammatory processes of the urogenital organs in discussed.