Clinically important bacteria interest more people than do
the other types. Making renderings for CG visualization of the common
clinically important bacteria bacteria as they appear in LM or light microscopy
in Xara 3D is very easy. You can use a period for the round shaped cocci and/or
coccobacilli. You can use a dash for the bacilli or rod shaped bacteria. You
can stretch out the dash to make it as long as you desire. Then you use a
rounded bevel type and turn up the bevel value to about 600 or so. This will
round out the text object nicely. Then you click on text texture and select a
wavy or bumpy blue or red texture image. Blue is for gram positive organisms.
Red would be for gram negative organisms and also it will work nicely for
organisms which have teichoic acid in their cell walls and have to stained with
a Ziel-Nielsen acid fast stain. They look red too. There are basically these
four types of bacteria, gpc,gpr,gnc,gnr, which are of clinical significance
with a few characteristic morphological variations. Then there is a catch all
group of others. Most can be approximated with text characters and a little
tweaking or stretching. Alternatively one may make .xar or .web or .mtf files
which can serve as an approximation for the bacterial shapes and import them
into Xara 3D. The texture which is applied can be any non- descript old texture
since the bacteria lack any real distinctive surface features even when viewed
with electron microscopy. Color also is a fanciful thing and can be applied
creatively to enhance the aesthetic appeal of the image. A professor Kunkel has
done about the best work in this regard. And his website is a voluminous
treasure chest of images of microorganisms including but, not limited to
bacteria.
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There are other variations in shape. There are kidney bean
shapes, lancet shapes, fusiform shapes, spirila or corkscrew shapes, internal
spore shapes, coryneform shapes, pair shapes, cluster shapes, diplococcoid
shapes, vibrio shapes and a couple of others. Capsules can be seen under the
light microscope. Flagella or flagellar masses can be discerned as well.
Creative use of Xara 3D should display each of these morphic types quite well.
General representaions of bacterial morphology are all that is necessary for
computer CG of bacteria. Does anybody know how bacteria like proteus vulgaris
move? Do they move in straight lines? Or do they sit in one place and just
jiggle about? One could depict the growth or splitting of a bacterium in Xara
3D. One can change the aspect ratio of one line or more of text or objects by
putting in a value which scrunches them up into one. Then you would change the
value incrementally and export successive images until there would be complete
separation.
If you do create some interesting images and animations, please
give Buddycom an email.
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Clinical
Bacteria |
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