Bacteria in Solitary Confinement |
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| Authors: | Conrad W Mullineaux |
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| Institution: | School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London, United Kingdom; Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS), University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany |
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| Abstract: | Even in clonal bacterial cultures, individual bacteria can show substantial stochastic variation, leading to pitfalls in the interpretation of data derived from millions of cells in a culture. In this issue of the Journal of Bacteriology, as part of their study on osmoadaptation in a cyanobacterium, Nanatani et al. describe employing an ingenious microfluidic device that gently cages individual cells (J Bacteriol 197:676–687, 2015, http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/JB.02276-14). The device is a welcome addition to the toolkit available to probe the responses of individual cells to environmental cues. |
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