TY - JOUR TI - Iodine Staining of Escherichia coli Expressing Genes Involved in the Synthesis of Bacterial Glycogen AU - Demonte, Ana M. AU - Diez, Matías D. Asención AU - Guerrero, Sergio A. AU - Ballicora, Miguel A. AU - Iglesias, Alberto A. VL - 4 IS - 17 PY - 2014 DA - 2014/09/05 SP - e1224 C1 - Bio-protocol 2014;4:e1224 DO - 10.21769/BioProtoc.1224 UR - https://doi.org/10.21769/BioProtoc.1224 AB - The presence of intracellular glycogen can be detected by the following iodine staining technique. Cells with glycogen stain dark brown, whereas in its absence they remain with a pale yellowish color. It is hypothesized that iodine atoms fit into helical coils formed by the α-polyglucan to form a coloured glycogen-iodine complex. Here, we have studied the expression of Streptococcus mutans (S. mutans) genes that control the biosynthesis of this polysaccharide (Asencion Diez et al., 2013). Thus, we expressed glgC and glgD genes coding for both ADP-Glc pyrophosphorylase subunits in Escherichia coli (E. coli) AC70R1-504 cells to complement the deficient accumulation of glycogen by this strain (Iglesias et al., 1993). In control cells or in those where an inactive protein was expressed, the synthesis of the polysaccharide was undetectable by this iodine staining technique. KW - Reserve polysaccharide KW - Bacterial metabolism KW - Qualitative analysis KW - ADP-glucose KW - Glycogenesis JF - Bio-protocol SN - 2331-8325 PB - Bio-protocol LLC. BIO101 - False