Mechanical stability of individual bacterial cells under different osmotic pressure conditions: a nanoindentation study of Pseudomonas aeruginosa

• Lizeth García-Torres,
• Idania De Alba Montero,
• Eleazar Samuel Kolosovas-Machuca,
• Facundo Ruiz,
• Sumati Bhatia,
• Jose Luis Cuellar Camacho and
• Jaime Ruiz-García

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2025, 16, 1171–1183, doi:10.3762/bjnano.16.86

• provided Young’s moduli in the range of 0.7–1.1 kPa. Implications of the presented results with previously reported data in the literature are discussed. Keywords: AFM; force spectroscopy; membrane rigidity; nanomechanical mapping; osmotic shock; Introduction Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA) is a Gram

• channels mitigate any threatening conditions to the integrity of the membrane (e.g., exceeding internal pressures due to drastic osmotic downshocks or shriveling caused by sudden shrinkage of the membrane in hypertonic solution). During exposure to a hypotonic solution, membrane lysis by osmotic shock is

• relate the stiffness of a rod-shaped bacteria under deformation to its internal turgor pressure was used. The obtained values were consistent with those reported for Gram-negative bacteria in growth medium but inconsistent with those reported in hypotonic solutions. We argue that osmotic shock and