Figure 4
From: Staphylococcus aureus forms spreading dendrites that have characteristics of active motility
The comet cores are encased in a slime matrix.
We used ESEM to observe the comets at high magnification without disrupting them. The comet cores are surrounded by a matrix of slime, which is consistent with the phase bright cores seen in Fig. 2. The left image shows the slime is associated with S. aureus cells (scale bar = 20 μm), whilst the right image shows a comet core completely surrounded by slime.
