MICRO-C-OMICS #14: Tiny Mini Vibrations by Tiny Mini Bacteria

Today’s comic is about a method to detect viability of microorganisms. I love this method, because it is suggested as a potential tool to detect life in extreme environments and in space, besides the medical applications such as assessing effectiveness of antibiotics in our daily life (And I also love it because there is a lot of physics involved, satisfying the engineer side of me: mechanics at the nano-scale) In this method an Atomic Force Microscopy-grade cantilever, which is a tiny plate usually made of silicone, is inoculated with cells (or environmental samples). The cantilever, acting as a motion sensor, transduces the small scale (nanometric !) movements of the cells. If the cells are active and moving, cantilever fluctuates more, if the cells are less active or dead, the cantilever fluctuates less. (you can image cantilever as a springboard, the more you jump the more it fluctuates). There you go, a quick way of assessing cell viability. For more information you can check the paper by Kasas et al. (2015) Detecting nanoscale vibrations as signature of life. Proc.Natl. Acad.Sci. USA. 2015; 112(2): 378-381

#microcomics