Question

What is the result of simple staining? What is the color and shape?

Answer 1

Simple staining is a technique used to study the shape, size, as well as arrangement of bacterial cells using a single stain. The stain used is basic in nature, (like methylene blue, safranin, or, crystal violet) that gets attracted to negatively charged cell wall compenents and nucleic acids of bacteria. This stains the cell boundaries of bacteria that forms a clear contrast against the unstained background.

Thus, the result of simple staining is a colored or stained colony of bacterial cells with distinct boundaries against the unstained background.

The color will depend on the type of stain used. Methylene blue stains blue, safranin stains dark pink to red, and so on.

The shape will depend on the type of bacterial colony. It might be spherical (cocci), spiral shaped, rod shaped (bacillus).