I have a bit of a puzzle for you this week. The following are transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images of a liquid-based stock culture that we used to keep refrigerated for use as a positive control. This positive control organism was plated at the same time as patient specimens to ensure that our culture media was capable of sustaining the organism's growth. Cultures were accomplished by plating the control or the patient specimen onto a non-nutrient agar overlain with a lawn of bacteria as a food source. We recently did away with this culture in favor of a faster real-time PCR assay that is performed daily (cultures used to take up to 5 days to become positive). As someone who loves microbe morphology, I decided to preserve this organism forever by submitting our stock culture for TEM analysis. Here are some representative images that we took:
What is this organism?
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