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Real-time rheology of living bacteria

By: Catarina Leal
From: ISEL
At: Instituto de Investigação Interdisciplinar, Anfiteatro
[2014-01-29] 11:00

The study of the mechanical properties of living bacteria in a liquid rich medium, environment commonly used in laboratorial settings, opens a new perspective on the bacterial physiology and behaviour during population growth. In this work, the human pathogen Staphylococcus aureus was used as a study model due to its coccoid shape and regular morphology: MRSA strain COL and its mutant strain RUSAL9, which presents a deficient daughter-cell separation mechanism. Cultures were grown under a mechanical stress solicitation in parallel with optical density monitorization. Complex viscoelastic behaviour was revealed by these bacterial systems. In particular, the shear viscosity measurement during growth time, for a constant shear rate, showed an unexpected behaviour that cannot be observed by common optical experimental techniques.