![]() ![]() Bacteria always face harsh and new environments and conditions and only survive if they have the right tools or means. Here, we looked at the different shapes that bacteria have and how these help them survive. This for example helps pathogens swim through the mucus of our stomach and guts and colonise us and make us sick. Spiral bacteria use a fascinating helical movement to screw through gel-like or viscous fluids. This keeps them at their preferred location and protects them from being flushed away. Here, their shapes help them align with the flow of water or our gut content while they stay attached to a surface or the gut wall. Curved bacteria grow in watery environments but also in our guts. Lastly, both curved and helical bacteria use their shapes to get better around their environments. Another advantage of these multicellular organisms is that they allow more cells to attach to surfaces and colonise hosts. These stronger and larger structures protect bacteria from being eaten by other organisms. Many rod-shaped bacteria also form longer filamentous organisms. This helps them colonise different locations and resist dangerous environments. Bacterial cell shapes help face harsh environmentsĪlso, straight rod cells can pack into biofilms more efficiently and build organised structures. This allows them to swim to new places in cases of danger or the lack of nutrients. And thanks to their shapes, they are efficient swimmers. On the other hand, rod-shaped bacteria often have flagella. This helps cocci to grow in locations where there are little amounts of nutrients. ![]() So they don’t actually need that many nutrients. All this while their cell volume is relatively small. This means they have a large envelope surface through which they can take up a lot of nutrients. Often, the cell shape gives a bacterium advantages over other bacteria and it is easier for them to settle down and face harsh environments.įor example, spherical cells have the lowest surface-to-volume ratio. ![]() ![]() Now that we have seen the different shapes of bacteria, you might ask yourself, why do bacteria have these different shapes? How do they help them?Īs always in biology, it comes down to how a property helps a bacterium survive in a certain location. These push and grow to the outside giving these bacteria a shiny star shape. The star shape comes from six little arms that extend out of the bacterial cell. This is why the peptidoglycan layer is pretty rigid and stiff and has a specific shape in each bacterium. This peptidoglycan layer is made of sugars that are linked together by very strong bonds. These keep the cellular machines and internal parts together so that a bacterium can function within this envelope.Īnd this envelope also gives bacteria their shape.īoth Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria have a layer of so-called peptidoglycan within their envelope. To protect themselves from the environment, bacteria as well as all other organisms have cell envelopes. So, what is it about bacterial shapes? Why do bacteria look differently? And how do the different shapes of bacteria help them survive and thrive? What gives bacteria their shapes? Yet, some of these bacterial superpowers are indeed influenced by their cell shapes. Even though bacteria looked similar, they had different superpowers. It came only with later, modern technologies that scientists learned that there was more to bacteria than their shapes. So, they talked of cocci and bacilli based on the spheres and rods that they saw under the microscope.Īnd they classified microbes and bacteria based on these shapes. They could only describe the shapes of these tiny organisms. When scientists first used microscopes to look at microorganisms and bacteria, they did not know what they were seeing. ![]()
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