Life on a Grain of Sand - SEM images of sand biofilm
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The Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) images on this page are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License . You are free to distribute these images while giving attribution in the following manner:
"Image courtesy of the Lewis Lab at Northeastern University. Image created by Anthony D'Onofrio, William H. Fowle, Eric J. Stewart and Kim Lewis."
The above images were created on February 10, 2009 and posted online under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License on March 28, 2010. Samples of intertidal marine sediment were collected from Canoe Beach in Nahant, MA in February 2009 and fixed by immersion in 3.0% glutaraldhyde in 0.1M cacodylate buffer (pH 7.4) containing 0.35 M sucrose, for 1 hour at 4o C. After rinsing in buffer the samples were post-fixed in 1.0% osmium tetroxide in 0.1 M cacodylate buffer (pH 7.4) for 1 hr at RT. Following postfixation the samples were rinsed with buffer then dehydrated through a graded series of ethanol. The specimens were then critical point dried with CO2 using a Smadri PVT-3 critical point dryer (Tousimis Corp. Rockville, MD). The specimens were mounted on aluminum specimen mounts with colloidal graphite, coated with 10-15 nm platinum/palladium (80:20) using a Denton DV502 vacuum evaporator, and examined with a Hitachi S-4800 field emission SEM (Hitachi, Ltd. Tokyo, Japan).
Additional images from this series were published as part of a study examining the role of siderophores in promoting the growth of uncultured bacteria:
Anthony D'Onofrio, Jason M. Crawford, Eric J. Stewart, Kathrin Witt, Ekaterina Gavrish, Slava Epstein, Jon Clardy, Kim Lewis (2010) Siderophores from Neighboring Organisms Promote the Growth of Uncultured Bacteria. Chemistry & Biology 17(3)256-264. [PDF]
Attribution:
"Image courtesy of the Lewis Lab at Northeastern University. Image created by Anthony D'Onofrio, William H. Fowle, Eric J. Stewart and Kim Lewis."