Abstract
Recent advances in atomic force microscopy (AFM) are revolutionizing our views of microbial surfaces. While AFM imaging is very useful for visualizing the surface of hydrated cells and membranes on the nanoscale, force spectroscopy enables researchers to locally probe biomolecular forces and physical properties. These unique capabilities allow us to address a number of questions that were inaccessible before, such as how does the surface architecture of microbes change as they grow or interact with drugs, and what are the molecular forces driving their interaction with antibiotics and host cells? Here, we provide a flavor of recent achievements brought by AFM imaging and single molecule force spectroscopy in microbiology.
Highlights
During the past 40 years, the importance of the microbial cell surface in biology, medicine, industry, and ecology has been increasingly recognized
Recent advances in atomic force microscopy (AFM) are helping to overcome these problems by providing three-dimensional images of hydrated cells and membranes with nanometer resolution [6, 7], and enabling researchers to probe a variety of molecular forces and physical properties on cell surfaces, including the unfolding pathways of single membrane proteins [8], the elasticity of cell walls [9], the molecular forces responsible for cell–cell and cell–solid interactions [10], and the localization of specific molecular recognition sites [11]
Molecular recognition studies with the AFM implies functionalizing the tips with relevant biomolecules, using procedures that meet the following requirements [11, 44]: (a) the forces which immobilize the molecules should be stronger than the intermolecular force being studied; (b) the attached biomolecules should have enough mobility so that they can freely interact with complementary molecules; (c) the contribution of nonspecific adhesion to the measured forces should be minimized; (d) attaching biomolecules at low surface density is Molecular recognition forces are measured by recording force curves between modified tips and sample and assessing the unbinding force between complementary receptor and ligand molecules from the adhesion force observed upon retraction
Summary
During the past 40 years, the importance of the microbial cell surface in biology, medicine, industry, and ecology has been increasingly recognized. Recent advances in atomic force microscopy (AFM) are helping to overcome these problems by providing three-dimensional images of hydrated cells and membranes with nanometer resolution [6, 7], and enabling researchers to probe a variety of molecular forces and physical properties on cell surfaces, including the unfolding pathways of single membrane proteins [8], the elasticity of cell walls [9], the molecular forces responsible for cell–cell and cell–solid interactions [10], and the localization of specific molecular recognition sites [11].
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