Quantification of Bacterial Twitching Motility in Dense Colonies Using Transmitted Light Microscopy and Computational Image Analysis
Benjamin Smith,
Jianfang Li,
Matteo Metruccio,
Stephanie Wan,
David Evans,
Suzanne Fleiszig
Affiliations
Benjamin Smith
Graduate Group in Vision Science, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
Jianfang Li
School of Optometry, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
Matteo Metruccio
School of Optometry, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
Stephanie Wan
Graduate Group in Vision Science, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
David Evans
School of Optometry, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USACollege of Pharmacy, Touro University California, Vallejo, CA, USA
Suzanne Fleiszig
Graduate Group in Vision Science, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USASchool of Optometry, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA, Graduate Groups in Microbiology, and Infectious Disease & Immunity, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
A method was developed to allow the quantification and mapping of relative bacterial twitching motility in dense samples, where tracking of individual bacteria was not feasible. In this approach, movies of bacterial films were acquired using differential interference contrast microscopy (DIC), and bacterial motility was then indirectly quantified by the degree to which the bacteria modulated the intensity of light in the field-of-view over time. This allowed the mapping of areas of relatively high and low motility within a single field-of-view, and comparison of the total distribution of motility between samples.
