Gliding Motility in Some Non‐spreading Flexibacteria

Abstract

ABSTRACT. A plate technique for detecting gliding motility is described in which glass beads placed between agar surfaces and coverslips produced surrounding areas of liquid, thus allowing cells to move freely. Some relatively short non‐spreading flexibacteria glided obviously. The movements are described and also those of myxobacteria and a fimbriate twitching bacterium. Flavobacterium aquatile F36 glided and its taxonomic status is discussed.

Synonymy of Flavobacterium pectinovorum Dorey with Cytophaga johnsonae Stanier

“…F . pectinovorum NCIB 9059 is an orange-yellow-pigmented, gram-negative, aflagellate rod which exhibits gliding motility (17, 18, 231, although spreading on agar media has not been evident in previous work (18,21,23). It has been suggested that this species be reassigned to Brisou's yellow, nonmotile genus Empedobacter (5; P. Kaiser, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Paris, Paris, France, 1971), but the consensus is that this organism more properly belongs in the genus Cytophaga (17, 18, 21, 32).…”

Flavobacterium aquatile and Flavobacterium meningosepticum: Glucose Nonfermenters with Similar Flagellar Morphologies

“…3 through 5). Perry (25) did not detect gliding motility in NCTC 10016. Twitching motility and fimbriae were not detected in ATCC 13253 (12).…”

“…Weeks (31) described F. aquatile as nonmotile after reporting in 1955 that strain F36, is nonmotile in a hanging drop preparation (29). Mitchell et al (23) reported that F. aquatile NCIB 8694 swarms after prolonged incubation at 15"C, and Perry (25) reported that it has gliding motility. The early historical records of the species, two independent observations of swarming and gliding, and spreading growth in semisolid Casitone motility medium permit the conclusion that the species and the neotype strain are motile.…”

Chthonobacter albigriseus gen. nov., sp. nov., isolated from grass-field soil

“…Cell motility was determined by the hanging-drop method [4] using the light microscope. Gliding motility was examined by observing the spread of colony edges on R2A agar [5] and by microscopic observation of the hanging drops (4,20,25,30,35,37,40, 42 and 45 C). Growth in R2A broth at pH 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 was checked.…”