First-ever report of FAST in anaerobic Giardia intestinalis!  Researchers at Charles University Prague, and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München implemented FAST to overcome the challenge of imaging anoxic protozoa.  They hence were able to elucidate the transmission of genomeless mitochondria.  They published their results in BMC Biology 2021.

The presence of mitochondria is a distinguishing feature between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells.  The evolutionary origin of mitochondria coincided with the formation of eukaryotes.  From that point, control of mitochondrial inheritance was required.  Yet, how mitochondria have been maintained throughout the eukaryotic cell cycle remains a matter of study.  Indeed only little is known about the segregation of mitochondria to daughter cells during cell division.  Additionally, anaerobic eukaryotic microbes evolved a variety of genomeless mitochondria-related organelles (MROs).  Those could be theoretically assembled de novo, thus providing a distinct mechanistic basis for maintenance of stable mitochondrial numbers.  The authors have approached this problem studying the structure and inheritance of Giardia intestinalis MROs known as mitosomes.  They combined 2D stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy and focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy (FIB/SEM).  And they implemented FAST for anaerobic imaging.

The Twinkle Factory supplies a variety of commercial fluorogens for FAST and splitFAST in anaerobes.

Read more about FAST in anaerobes

BMC Biology 2021 Access Inheritance of the reduced mitochondria of Giardia intestinalis is coupled to the flagellar maturation cycle Charles University Prague

Curr. Opin. Biotechnol. 2021 Anaerobic fluorescent reporters for cell identification, microbial cell biology and high-throughput screening of microbiota and genomic libraries University of Delaware

npj Biofilms Microbiomes 2021 Four species of bacteria deterministically assemble to form a stable biofilm in a millifluidic channel Sorbonne University

Biotechnol. Biofuels 2021 – Production of the Biocommodities Butanol and Acetone from Methanol with Fluorescent FAST-tagged Proteins using Metabolically Engineered Strains of Eubacterium Limosum Ulm University

Mbio 2020 – Interspecies Microbial Fusion and Large-Scale Exchange of Cytoplasmic Proteins and RNA in a Syntrophic Clostridium Coculture University of Delaware