Here are some microbes you can use to make prepared slides or isolate your own pure cultures. This section is written by two microbiologists who were in charge of the Massey University Microbial Culture Collection, responsible for over 2000 strains of moulds, yeasts, bacteria, and viruses. In good growth conditions it reproduces vegetatively by binary fission. This stage is called the spore.
Spores can survive a long time in cold, dry conditions until the environment changes again.
The cells you see above at the title are typical for Bacillus bacteria. Bacillus megaterium is closely related to Bacillus anthracis , the organism responsible for Anthrax disease. There is an island off the coast of Britain where the Anthrax spores still survive from early germ-warfare experiments in World War Two. Another relative Bacillus is used in Cold Water Surf washing powder. Bacillus thuringiensis is used as a biological control for catapillars in vegetable gardens.