Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

Single-Molecule Super-Resolution Imaging Of Geobacter Sulfurreducens Under Anaerobic Conditions, Ziyi Hu

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Geobacter sulfurreducens are anaerobic bacteria capable of making electrical contacts with other organisms and extracellular electron acceptors. The challenge of imaging live Geobacter bacteria is maintaining anaerobic conditions during the imaging process. In this thesis, we augment a single-molecule localization microscope (SMLM) with a home-built anaerobic imaging chamber and use constant argon bubbling to maintain oxygen-free imaging conditions. To validate the imaging protocol, we use the transient binding of Nile red to resolve the spherical morphology of lipid-coated glass spheres with nanoscale resolution. However, when imaging Geobacter, the distribution of Nile red localizations is non-uniform, both between different cells …