Polarized light scattering: a biophysical method for studying bacterial cells.

We outline a method which uses differentially polarized light scattering to study the properties of bacterial cell suspensions, i.e., spores of Bacillus Subtilis. The identification of bacterial cells of different strains, with and without plasmid insertion, was performed by means of differential polarization light scattering (DPLS). The samples displayed distinct angular behaviors for the S14 and S34 normalized scattering parameters of the Mueller matrix depending on the strain and on a plasmid insertion in the chromosomal unit. These experiments, performed blindly, point out the possibility of achieving real time identification of micro-organisms by DPLS spectrometry.