โ Scribed by Mohd. Saif Zaman; Anita Goyal; Gyanendra Prakash Dubey; Pradeep K. Gupta; Harish Chandra; Taposh K. Das; Munia Ganguli; Yogendra Singh
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External and internal changes occurring during the process of germination of Bacillus anthracis spores were observed through atomic force microscopy (AFM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM), respectively. AFM studies showed that in response to L-alanine (4 mM), as a germinant, the spore germinates into a vegetative cell in 3 hours. The temporal size changes occurring during the germination were gradual but the major change in size was observed between the second and third hour. TEM of spores showed the presence of varied layers, which is in accordance with previous studies. However, the integrity of these layers was lost gradually during the process of germination. The inner spore membrane remains intact even until late stages of germination, whereas the coat, outer spore membrane, and the cortical layers are discarded at the second-hour stage. The results indicate that sequential changes during the germination of a B. anthracis spore are similar to other species of the Bacillus group.
๐ SIMILAR VOLUMES
Since Hills ' (1949a, b) discovery that the garminative properties of yeast extract for bacterial spores is due to specific compounds such as L-alanine and adenosine, these compounds, together with inosine and glucose (POWELL, 1957), have figured prominently in expsrimental and theoretical approache
## THIRTEEN FIQURES An extensive review of the literature has revealed only a few papers which present the results of observations of living sporulating and germinating bacteria. Of these papers, the most informative have been those by Wyckoff and Ter Louw ( '31), who used ultraviolet microscopy,