Ultrastructure of square bacteria from a brine pool in Southern Sinai

The square bacterium discovered by Walsby (Nature [London] 283:69-71, 1980) has been shown to possess the ultrastructural features of a typical halophile. The cell wall is comprised of regularly arranged subunits demonstrated by thin sectioning, shadowed replicas, and negative staining. Optical diffraction confirms the existence of both hexagonal and tetragonal arrangements of the cell wall subunits and also of different lattice constants and suggests a mixed population of bacteria.

[1]  D. Oesterhelt,et al.  Structure of the cell envelope of Halobacterium halobium , 1976, The Journal of cell biology.

[2]  N. Simionescu,et al.  Galloylglucoses of low molecular weight as mordant in electron microscopy. I. Procedure, and evidence for mordanting effect , 1976, The Journal of cell biology.

[3]  W. Stoeckenius,et al.  A MORPHOLOGICAL STUDY OF HALOBACTERIUM HALOBIUM AND ITS LYSIS IN MEDIA OF LOW SALT CONCENTRATION , 1967, The Journal of cell biology.

[4]  M. Kessel.  A unique crystalline wall layer in the cyanobacterium Microcystis marginata. , 1978, Journal of ultrastructure research.

[5]  U. Sleytr,et al.  Ultrastructure of the cell walls of two closely related clostridia that possess different regular arrays of surface subunits , 1976, Journal of bacteriology.

[6]  Wolfgang Baumeister,et al.  Electron Microscopy at Molecular Dimensions , 1980, Proceedings in Life Sciences.

[7]  U. Sleytr,et al.  Analysis of regular arrays of subunits on bacterial surfaces: evidence for a dynamic process of assembly. , 1975, Journal of ultrastructure research.

[8]  K. Roberts.  Crystalline glycoprotein cell walls of algae: their stucture, composition and assembly. , 1974, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences.

[9]  W. Stoeckenius.  Walsby's square bacterium: fine structure of an orthogonal procaryote , 1981, Journal of bacteriology.

[10]  A C Steven,et al.  Folding and capsomere morphology of the P23 surface shell of bacteriophage T4 polyheads from mutants in five different head genes. , 1976, Journal of molecular biology.

[11]  A. Spurr.  A low-viscosity epoxy resin embedding medium for electron microscopy. , 1969, Journal of ultrastructure research.

[12]  T. Yoshizawa,et al.  Ultrastructure of purple membrane and cell wall of Halobacterium halobium. , 1980, Journal of ultrastructure research.

[13]  A. Walsby,et al.  A square bacterium , 1980, Nature.