What are bacterial spores?

A bacterial spore is a spore or spore-like structure produced by bacteria. These include endospores, chrysospores, and spores produced by actinomycetes and nitrogen-fixing bacteria. In bacteria, spore formation is merely a means of surviving in hostile environments, not a means of reproduction. Bacterial spores have the following characteristics: can tolerate extreme dryness; some can survive in sub-zero temperatures; some can emit toxic compounds, such as the Cry toxin synthesized by Bacillus thaliana.

Because bacterial spores are highly resistant to the environment, they are highly transmissible. This makes pathogens such as Clostridium difficile, which are protected by bacterial spores, very problematic.

Applications of bacterial spores

Spores' characteristics offer a stable platform for biosensing, drug delivery, and other cutting-edge bioanalytical applications.

Bacterial spores surface display system

The ideal effect-enhancing, time-consuming, and low-cost technique is spore surface display, which has potential applications in the environmental, medical, and industrial development fields.

Bacterial spores for enzyme expression and delivery

In many industrial processes, a variety of specific enzymes are necessary for biocatalysis and biotransformation, and recycling enzymes can significantly lower costs. Immobilization of enzymes in spores can improve enzyme recoverability.

Bacterial spores for vaccine expression and delivery

Mucosal vaccines have several advantages over injectable conventional vaccines, such as induction of adaptive immunity, production of secreted IgA at the entry site of most pathogens, and needle-free vaccination. Despite their potential, only a few mucosal vaccines are currently in use. The development of new and effective mucosal vaccines relies heavily on the identification of innovative antigens, highly effective adjuvants, and delivery systems. Several phages-, bacterial- or nanoparticle-based approaches have been proposed to deliver antigens to mucosal surfaces. Bacterial spores are also considered as antigen carriers, and various antigens have been successfully exposed on their surface. Due to their special structure, spores combine the advantages of living microorganisms with synthetic nanoparticles. When administered mucosally, antigen-expressing spores have been shown to induce antigen-specific protective immune responses.

Bacterial spores for single domain antibody production

Single domain antibodies (sdAbs) are frequently used in oncology and infectious diseases as diagnostic and therapeutic agents. Bacillus subtilis can secrete sdAbs directly into the culture supernatant and does not produce endotoxins, making the subsequent purification step easier.

Bacterial spores for cancer drug delivery

Spores can germinate in the intestine. Furthermore, drug-carrying spores have the ability to both target and kill cancer cells. Development of cancer-targeting spore carriers enable the loading of hydrophobic cancer drugs on the spore surface and drug release after germination in the gastrointestinal tract.

Bacterial spore solutions at Lifeasible

Lifeasible provides AFM platforms for bacterial spore microbiological studies. In a variety of modes, the company can help observe the dynamic processes associated with spore formation or germination in nutrient cells.

Lifeasible provides Raman spectroscopy to detect dangerous bacterial endospores in any environmental object as well as other biological objects quickly, highly sensitively, and consistently.