Bacteria in solitary confinement

Abstract

Even in clonal bacterial cultures, individual bacteria can show substantial stochastic variation, leading to pitfalls in the interpretation of data derived from millions of cells in a culture. In this issue of the Journal of Bacteriology, as part of their study on osmoadaptation in a cyanobacterium, Nanatani et al. describe employing an ingenious microfluidic device that gently cages individual cells (J Bacteriol 197:676-687, 2015, http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/JB.02276-14). The device is a welcome addition to the toolkit available to probe the responses of individual cells to environmental cues.