Abstract
Significant technical challenges have limited the study of extremophile cell biology. Here we describe a system for imaging samples at 75°C using high numerical aperture, oil-immersion lenses. With this system we observed and quantified the dynamics of cell division in the model thermoacidophilic crenarchaeon Sulfolobus acidocaldarius with unprecedented resolution. In addition, we observed previously undescribed dynamic cell shape changes, cell motility, and cell-cell interactions, shedding significant new light on the high-temperature lifestyle of this organism.
Highlights
Archaea represent one of three domains of life on Earth (Woese et al, 1990), but we know far less about the cell biology of archaeal organisms than we know about bacteria and eukaryotes
In addition to the fact that we observed surface motility and cell division, our results are quantitatively consistent with previous studies, including light and electron microscopy of fixed cells
The following are consistent with previous observations: cell size and shape (Brock et al, 1972), time required for cytokinesis (Tarrason Risa et al, 2020), asymmetry of the cytokinetic furrow (Dobro et al, 2013)
Summary
Archaea represent one of three domains of life on Earth (Woese et al, 1990), but we know far less about the cell biology of archaeal organisms than we know about bacteria and eukaryotes. We do not understand how most archaea control their shape, organize their intracellular spaces, segregate their DNA, or divide One reason for this lack of information is that many tools and techniques commonly used to study the cell biology of model bacteria and eukaryotes do not work properly under the more extreme growth conditions required by some model archaea. This is true for high-resolution, live-cell light microscopy, which has not been applied to thermophilic prokaryotes mainly because of the difficulty of sufficiently heating samples and high-NA objectives and a lack of fluorescent proteins that fold correctly and fluoresce at high temperatures. Direct observation of dividing Sulfolobus acidocaldarius cells at high spatial and temporal resolution is lacking
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