London, July 28 (Inditop.com) Researchers have developed a technique to capture live images of how bacteria infect their host.
While most studies of bacterial infection are done after the death of the infected organism, this system developed by scientists at the Universities of Bath and Exeter is the first to follow the progress of infection in real-time with living organisms.
Researchers used developing fruit fly embryos as a model organism, injecting fluorescently tagged bacteria into the embryos and observing their interaction with the insect’s immune system using time-lapse confocal microscopy.
Confocal microscopy is an optical imaging technique used to increase micrograph contrast and/or to reconstruct 3-D images. A micrograph is a photograph or similar image taken through a microscope.
The researchers can also tag individual bacterial proteins to follow their movement and determine their specific roles in the infection process.
“Cells often behave very differently once they have been taken out of their natural environment and cultured in a petri dish,” explained Will Wood, research fellow in biology and biochemistry at Bath University.
“In the body, immune surveillance cells such as hemocytes (or macrophages in vertebrates) are exposed to a battery of signals from different sources. The cells integrate these signals and react to them accordingly,” he said.
“Once these cells are removed from this complex environment and cultured in a petri dish these signals are lost. Therefore, it is really important to study whole organisms to fully understand how bacteria interact with their host,” added Wood.
Nick Waterfield, study co-author said: “To be able to film the microscopic battle between single bacterial cells and immune cells in a whole animal and in real time is astounding.
The scientists are hoping to use this system in the future with human pathogens such as Listeria and Trypanosomes, said a University of Bath release.
The study was published in PLoS Pathogens.
