Question

Our immune system is very good at detecting bacterial flagella as a foreign antigen but our eyes are not. Which of the following can help our eyes see bacterial flagella?

A. Light microscopy with flagella stain
B. Fluorescence microscopy with flagella probe
C. Transmission electron microscopy
D. All of the above

Answer 1

D.All of the above

bacterial flagellae is made up of protein flagellin the width if flagellae ranges between 10 to 50nm. and we can easily observe under electron microscope. for observation of flagellae under light microscope we need to stain the flagellae and the stains which are used to identify the flagellae are mordants example potassium alum, the stain which is used for bacteria is going to thicken the flagellum so we can easily observe under light microscope.

either we can observe flagellae by these filaments are stained with specific dyes avilable from molecular probes and this allows the filaments looks bright and the other cell bodies are relatively dim and then we can easily visuvalise the bacteria flagella under fluorescence microscopy.

TEM is used as research tool in microbiology for high resolution structural studies of bacteria and this technique involves the preparation of whole cell mounts where the bacterial cells dried onto a thin film and followed by staining with heavy metals. this technique is mainly used to study the morphology and surface structures of bacteria.