BIOSPECKLE AS A NEW TOOL TO DISCRIMINATE BETWEEN FUNGI AND BACTERIA

MARCELO GUZMAN; GONZÁLO HERNÁN SENDRA; MELINA NISENBAUM; LUCÍA ISABEL PASSONI; SILVIA ELENA MURIALDO; JORGE FROILÁN GONZÁLEZ; RICARDO ARIZAGA; HECTOR RABAL; MARCELO TRIVI

San Miguel de Tucuman

Congreso; VII CONGRESO ARGENTINO DE MICROBIOLOGÍA GENERAL SAMIGE DEL BICENTENARIO; 2011

Sociedad Argentina de Microbiología General

Chemotaxis is the movement of microorganisms towards or away chemical gradients. This phenomenon has a relevant importance in bioremediation, plant physiology, veterinary, biotechnology and other disciplines. In this work, we present a further development of dynamic speckle methods for the study of biological activity in bacteria under swarming assays. We attempt to determine biological activity differences between bacteria and other microorganisms. Although there are different optical methods to detect bacteria accumulations, none of them can differentiate between degrees of motility in the clusters of one image. Experiments using the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Pseudmonas putida F1 CheA and the fungi Phanerochaete chrysosporium RP-78, have demonstrated that the biospeckle can differentiate fungi from bacteria, and different sort of bacteria in one in situ surface screening. This was achieved for the biospeckle discrimination of different degrees of motility of bacteria and between the movement of bacteria and fungi. The biospeckle method offers the advantage of being fast, non invasive, inexpensive and accurate.