In this video, we're going to focus on spiral-shaped bacterial cells. Spiral-shaped cells can actually have a few varied morphologies or shapes that are never completely straight. Down below in this image, we're showing you 3 different morphologies of spiral-shaped cells. The first one on the far left is Vibrio, which is really a bent-shaped short curved rod. You can see that it has this bent shape here. It's not completely straight, and it's barely a spiral, but it is going to create this curve here that is the beginning of a spiral. Vibrio cholerae is an example of a bacterium that takes on this vibrio shape. These bacteria are curved as you can see here in this image.
The next one that we have here is spirillum, which we already talked about in some of our previous lesson videos. These are curved rods that actually form a full spiral. This right here resembles a corkscrew and is forming a spiral shape. Once again, Spirillum minus is an example of a bacterium that has that corkscrew or spirillum shape.
The third one that we have over here is very similar to the spirillum. The difference is, the spirochete, which is this last one here, is going to be much longer than spirillum. Not only is it much longer, but it's also going to have more flexible cells. The spiral will not be as tight since it is more elongated. You could see here it does have this curved spiral shape, but it is much more elongated, and it is going to be much more flexible. Borrelia burgdorferi is an example of a bacterium that takes on the spirochete morphology.
This here concludes our brief lesson on spiral-shaped bacterial cells. Once again, we'll be able to get some practice as we move forward. So I'll see you all in our next video.
