Scanning Electron Microscopy

Scanning Electron Microscopy, originally uploaded by rubensduarte.

author says:
Photo from a Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) of Metarhizium anisopliae and Agrobacterium tumefaciens. The microscope is a JEOL-JSM-6340F Field Emission SEM, from Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Magnification: 15000 x

I worked with them at my master's degree. My research was about the transference of DNA from the bacterium (A. tumefaciens) to the fungus cell (M. anisopliae). Here is a photo of them, after 9 hours of co-cultivation in the same medium. The bacteria cells (smaller rod-like) form aggregates around the fungi conidia and hypha.

The image clearly shows some kind of "fibril-like" structures between the bacteria and fungi. We know that the bacteria produce fibril proteins that attaches to the PLANT cells, but we need to make a couple of experiments to conclude if it is the same fibrils for the fungi.