• Question: how do you know what the different types of bacteria there are

    Asked by to Andrei, Ekbal, Gemma, Helen, Ruth on 16 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Ruth Nottingham

      Ruth Nottingham answered on 16 Jun 2014:

      Hey
      Good question.
      One way of looking at working out different types of bacteria is to look at their different shapes down a microscope.
      spherical (cocci), rod (bacilli), spiral (spirilla), comma (vibrios) or corkscrew (spirochaetes). They can exist as single cells, in pairs, chains or clusters.
      http://www.microbiologyonline.org.uk/about-microbiology/introducing-microbes/bacteria

      You can also stain bacteria with different dyes, the most famous is Gram staining, if the bacteria keeps the purple stain it is Gram positive if it doesn’t it is Gram negative.

    • Photo: Gemma Marsden

      Gemma Marsden answered on 16 Jun 2014:

      Hi sinclairm,
      Simply we do not know what mutlitudes of bacteria there are! The ones we do know are the ones we can isolate and grow. We are still finding more everyday!
      Being able to just look at DNA has meant that we have found new species that we could n’t culture before.
      We also use DNA analysing techniques to track bacteria we can culture and identify different species.

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