Blaise Boles, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology

Staphylococcus aureus is a bacterium that many healthy people carry on their skin and in their noses without getting sick. But when skin is punctured or broken, staph bacteria can enter the wound and cause infections, which can lead to other health problems. In this close-up image, you can see dozens of individual bacterial cells. These cells are each abit less than one micron (one micron is 1/1,000th of a millimeter) in diameter.