Project description:Microbial autotroph-heterotroph interactions influence biogeochemical cycles on a global scale, but the diversity and complexity of natural systems and their intractability to in situ manipulation make it challenging to elucidate the principles governing these interactions. The study of assembling phototrophic biofilm communities provides a robust means to identify such interactions and evaluate their contributions to the recruitment and maintenance of phylogenetic and functional diversity overtime. To examine primary succession in phototrophic communities, we isolated two unicyanobacterial consortia from the microbial mat in HotLake, Washington, characterizing the membership and metabolic function of each consortium. We then analyzed the spatial structures and quantified the community compositions of their assembling biofilms. The consortia retained the same suite of heterotrophic species, identified as abundant members of the mat and assigned to Alphaproteobacteria, Gammaproteobacteria, and Bacteroidetes. Autotroph growth rates dominated early in assembly, yielding to increasing heterotroph growth rates late in succession. The two consortia exhibited similar assembly patterns, with increasing relative abundances of members from Bacteroidetes and Alphaproteobacteria concurrent with decreasing relative abundances of those from Gamma proteobacteria. Despite these similarities at higher taxonomic levels, the relative abundances of individual heterotrophic species were substantially different in the developing consortial biofilms. This suggests that, although similar niches are created by the cyanobacterial metabolisms, the resulting webs of autotroph-heterotroph and heterotroph-heterotroph interactions are specific to each primary producer. The relative simplicity and tractability of the Hot Lake unicyanobacterial consortia make them useful model systems for deciphering interspecies interactions and assembly principles relevant to natural microbial communities.
Project description:Cryptomonas sp. was grown under phototrophic conditions, glucose supplemented phototrophic conditions and 3 different dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations: 1.5, 30 and 90 mg C l−1. The objective was to study the adaptations that make Cryptomonas sp. thrive under high DOC conditions.
Project description:Here we show that the phytochrome-less chlorophyte Chlamydomonas reinhardtii retains a functional pathway to synthesize the linear tetrapyrrole (bilin) precursor of the phytochrome chromophore. Reverse genetic, metabolic inactivation and bilin rescue experiments establish that this pathway is needed for heme iron acquisition and for the diurnal transition to phototrophic growth. RNA-Seq measurements reveal a bilin-dependent signaling network that is necessary for the heterotrophic to phototrophic transition. These results imply the presence of a novel bilin sensor pathway that may be widely distributed amongst oxygenic photosynthetic organisms.
Project description:Ravindra Garde, Bashar Ibrahim & Stefan Schuster. Extending the minimal model of metabolic oscillations in Bacillus subtilis biofilms. Scientific Reports 10, 1 (2020).
Biofilms are composed of microorganisms attached to a solid surface or floating on top of a liquid surface. They pose challenges in the field of medicine but can also have useful applications in industry. Regulation of biofilm growth is complex and still largely elusive. Oscillations are thought to be advantageous for biofilms to cope with nutrient starvation and chemical attacks. Recently, a minimal mathematical model has been employed to describe the oscillations in Bacillus subtilis biofilms. In this paper, we investigate four different modifications to that minimal model in order to better understand the oscillations in biofilms. Our first modification is towards making a gradient of metabolites from the center of the biofilm to the periphery. We find that it does not improve the model and is therefore, unnecessary. We then use realistic Michaelis-Menten kinetics to replace the highly simple mass-action kinetics for one of the reactions. Further, we use reversible reactions to mimic the diffusion in biofilms. As the final modification, we check the combined effect of using Michaelis-Menten kinetics and reversible reactions on the model behavior. We find that these two modifications alone or in combination improve the description of the biological scenario.
Project description:Gemmatimonas phototrophica is the only phototrophic member of the recently discovered bacterial phylum Gemmatimonadetes. It was isolated from a freshwater lake in the Gobi desert and first described in 2014. So far, Gemmatimonas phototrophica is the only bacterium to have received a complete set of photosynthesis-related genes by horizontal gene transfer from an ancient phototrophic species from the phylum Proteobacteria. This organism illustrates the possibility for engineering phototrophic capability in a non-phototrophic organism and is therefore of great interest to the field of synthetic biology. The structure of the photosynthetic reaction center-light harvesting 1 complex is under investigation by cryo-EM. Proteomic analysis verified the identities of the expected protein components of this complex and, additionally revealed polypeptides that were previously undiscovered and could be mapped to the cryo-EM images.