Morphology of Bacteria and its Structures External to Cell Wall
The morphology of bacterial cell includes characteristics such as size, shape, structure etc. First of all, Leeuwenhoek revealed the gross appearance of microorganism including bacteria by light microscope. By the discovery of electron microscope in early 1940’s the study of structural bacterial cell has been made very easier. The morphological characteristic of a bacterial cell is as follows.
Size: Bacteria vary in size from cell to cell. It can be as small as 0.1 to 0.2 μm in width to as large as more than 50 μm in diameter. A few very large prokaryotes such as Epulopiscium fishelsoni [1] that inhabits the intestinal tract of Surgeon fish are up to 50 μm in diameter and can be more than 0.5 mm in length. However, the dimension of an average rod cell prokaryotes E.coli are about 1×3 μm. Read more