noun
definition
The inner layer of a spore.
definition
A small vegetative spore produced by some bacteria.
Examples of endospores in a Sentence
The mucilage surrounding endospores of Mucor, conidia of Empusa, &c., serves to gum the spore to animals.
They are characterized especially by the zygospores, but the asexual organs (sporangia) exhibit interesting series of changes, beginning with the typical sporangium of Mucor containing numerous endospores, passing to cases where, as in Thamnidium, these are accompanied with more numerous small sporangia (sporangioles) containing few spores, and thence to Chaetocladium and Piptocephalis, where the sporangioles form but one spore and fall and germinate as a whole; that is to say, the monosporous sporangium has become a conidium, and Brefeld regarded these and similar series of changes as explaining the relation of ascus to conidium in higher fungi.
The existence of ciliated micrococci together with the formation of endospores - structures not known in the Cyanophyceae - reminds us of the flagellate Protozoa, e.g.
Meyer regards them as chlamydospores, and Klebs as " carpospores " or possibly chlamydospores similar to the endospores of yeast.
An arthrospore, however, is not a true spore but merely an ordinary vegetative cell which separates and passes into a condition of rest, and such may occur in forms which form endospores, e.g.
Systems have also been brought forward based on the formation of arthrospores and endospores, but as explained above this is eminently unsatisfactory, as arthrospores are not true spores and both kinds of reproductive bodies are found in one and the same form.
The supposed Micrococci present little that is characteristic; the more definite, rod-like form of the Bacilli offers a better means of recognition, though far from an infallible one; in a few cases dark granules, suggestive of endospores, have been found within the rods.
Only a few genera of bacteria such as Bacillus and Clostridium are capable of forming endospores.