Now that we have seen the different shapes of bacteria, you might ask yourself, why do bacteria have these different shapes? How do they help them?Īs always in biology, it comes down to how a property helps a bacterium survive in a certain location. These push and grow to the outside giving these bacteria a shiny star shape. The star shape comes from six little arms that extend out of the bacterial cell. This is why the peptidoglycan layer is pretty rigid and stiff and has a specific shape in each bacterium. This peptidoglycan layer is made of sugars that are linked together by very strong bonds. These keep the cellular machines and internal parts together so that a bacterium can function within this envelope.Īnd this envelope also gives bacteria their shape.īoth Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria have a layer of so-called peptidoglycan within their envelope. To protect themselves from the environment, bacteria as well as all other organisms have cell envelopes. So, what is it about bacterial shapes? Why do bacteria look differently? And how do the different shapes of bacteria help them survive and thrive? What gives bacteria their shapes? Yet, some of these bacterial superpowers are indeed influenced by their cell shapes. Even though bacteria looked similar, they had different superpowers. It came only with later, modern technologies that scientists learned that there was more to bacteria than their shapes. So, they talked of cocci and bacilli based on the spheres and rods that they saw under the microscope.Īnd they classified microbes and bacteria based on these shapes. They could only describe the shapes of these tiny organisms.

When scientists first used microscopes to look at microorganisms and bacteria, they did not know what they were seeing.

Bacteria shapes in blood