Nanometer-resolution imaging of living bacteria across species and cellular orientations.

Glutaraldehyde-functionalized glass enables nanometer-resolution AFM imaging of living Escherichia coli across LPS states, showing AFM contrast depends on LPS complexity and LPS-enriched islands.

• Why it matters: Native bacterial envelopes are key antibiotic targets, but AFM’s highest-resolution imaging has been limited by difficulties immobilizing cells without damaging them.
• What they did: The team created reversible covalent attachment using glutaraldehyde-functionalized glass, then imaged living Escherichia coli with and without LPS oligosaccharides and compared envelope features across species and growth phases.
• The result: AFM revealed LPS-enriched islands in Escherichia coli, enabled outer-membrane imaging in Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Acinetobacter baumannii, and found growth-phase dependent pole morphology changes in Escherichia coli.

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