Nanoscopic investigation of bacterial cells is essential to reveal their physiological status, impacting all cellular functions. Currently, this requires labeled probes or targeted staining procedures. Herein, we report a new bacterial feature, intracellular dynamics-resolved Rayleigh scattering (IDRS), that visualizes spatiotemporal cytoplasmic transitions in unlabeled bacteria and characterizes their real-time physiological status in 10 s. From single-bacterium IDRS signals, we discovered unique spatial patterns and their multiple transitions in Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria. The magnitude of IDRS signal variation highly correlated with the metabolic status of bacteria, differentiating persistent subpopulations. This is also the first report demonstrating distinct real-time metabolic conditions of unlabeled drug-resistant bacteria that are exposed to different doses of antibiotics. Our strategy opens up a way to simultaneously trace in situ metabolic and antibiotic resistance statuses, which can be applied in single-cell level control of bacterial metabolism and efficacy with a heterogeneous nature.
Keywords: Rayleigh scattering; antibiotic resistance; label-free single-bacterial cell imaging; metabolic status; persister subpopulation.