Microbiology Question, How do you determine motility of an endospore?

[Stella Richards]

Hi,

 

When observe an endospore under a microscope and find it to be large and swollen, almost like a big round pocket, but after a few weeks, you repeat the same process of staining and mounting on a glass and re-observing it under a microscope, but then you find that the old large round spore cell is gone only to discover a hundred different round spore cells under a microscope. Would this endospore microbacterium be considered positive for motility?

[CharonY]

Well, normally you cannot observe the same spore twice, unless by carefully preserving the specimen. But I am not sure what you describe. The other spores look different from the spores you saw first? In any case, motility is the active movement of cells. So unless you see the spores zipping around (and not due to convection), they are not.