Structural staining

Structural staining 

* Structural staining is used observe certain structures on bacteria.

* This is important because certain structures on bacteria can be antigenic or acts as an endotoxin.

* Structural stains are more complex than simples ones and use more than one stain to differentiate cellular components.

* They are used to examine structural differences between bacterial groups or to provide contrast to different structures within the same organisms.

* Examples of structural staining methods are cell wall staining, PHB staining, endospore staining etc.

cell wall staining 

* Bacterial cell wall is present beneath the capsule and surrounding the cytoplasm.

* It is a rigid structure that gives definite shape to the bacterial.

* It is made made up of peptidoglycan.

* And because of its thickness and chemical nature, it is resistant to the staining.

* Thus, it is normally difficult to separately stain the cell wall of the cells.

* There are various staining techniques used to stain cell wall like chance's method, Ringer's method and Dyar's method.