Isolation of SAR11 marine bacteria from cryopreserved seawater

In this study, we sought a means to increase current culture collections of SAR11 marine bacteria by testing the use of seawater cryopreserved with glycerol as an inoculum. In July 2017, raw seawater was collected outside of Kāne‘ohe Bay, Hawai‘i, in the tropical Pacific Ocean. A portion of this sample was diluted in seawater-based growth medium to create 576 × 2 mL dilution cultures containing 5 cells each and incubated for a high-throughput cultivation experiment, while another portion was cryopreserved in 10% glycerol. After ten months, a cryopreserved aliquot of seawater was thawed, diluted in seawater-based growth medium, and distributed to create a second high-throughput cultivation experiment of 480 × 2 mL dilution cultures containing 5 cells each and 94 cultures containing 105 cells each. The raw seawater cultivation experiment resulted in the successful isolation of 54 monocultures and 29 mixed-cultures, while cryopreserved seawater resulted in 59 monocultures and 29 mixed cultures. Combined, the cultures included 51 SAR11 isolates spanning 11 unique 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) from raw seawater inoculum and 74 SAR11 isolates spanning 13 unique ASVs from cryopreserved seawater. A vast majority (115 of 125) of SAR11 isolates from the two HTC experiments were members of SAR11 subclade Ia, though isolates of subclades IIIa and Va were also recovered from cryopreserved seawater and subclade Ib was recovered from both. The four most abundant SAR11 subclade Ia ASVs found in the initial seawater sample used to create both culture experiments were isolated by both approaches.ImportanceHigh-throughput dilution culture has proved to be a successful approach to bring some difficult-to-isolate planktonic microorganisms into culture, including the highly abundant SAR11 lineage of marine bacteria. While the long-term preservation of bacterial isolates by freezing in the presence of cryoprotectants such as glycerol has been shown to be an effective method of storing viable cells over long time periods (i.e. years), to our knowledge it had not previously been tested for its efficacy in preserving raw seawater for later use as inoculum for high-throughput cultivation experiments. We found that SAR11 and other abundant marine bacteria could be isolated from seawater that was previously cryopreserved for nearly 10 months, at a rate of culturability similar to that of the same seawater used fresh, immediately after collection. Our findings expand the potential of high-throughput cultivation experiments to include opportunities where immediate isolation experiments are impractical, allow for targeted isolation experiments from specific samples based on analyses such as microbial community structure, and enable cultivation experiments across a wide range of other conditions that would benefit from having source inoculum available over extended periods of time.

Nutrient levels and trade-offs control diversity in a serial dilution ecosystem

Microbial communities feature an immense diversity of species and this diversity is linked to outcomes ranging from ecosystem stability to medical prognoses. Yet the mechanisms underlying microbial diversity are under debate. While simple resource-competition models don't allow for coexistence of a large number of species, it was recently shown that metabolic trade-offs can allow unlimited diversity. Does this diversity persist with more realistic, intermittent nutrient supply? Here, we demonstrate theoretically that in serial dilution culture, metabolic trade-offs allow for high diversity. When a small amount of nutrient is supplied to each batch, the serial dilution dynamics mimic a chemostat-like steady state. If more nutrient is supplied, community diversity shifts due to an 'early-bird' effect. The interplay of this effect with different environmental factors and diversity-supporting mechanisms leads to a variety of relationships between nutrient supply and diversity, suggesting that real ecosystems may not obey a universal nutrient-diversity relationship.

Growth and Grazing Mortality Rates of Phylogenetic Groups of Bacterioplankton in Coastal Marine Environments

ABSTRACT Dilution culture experiments were conducted in western North Pacific coastal regions to determine growth and grazing mortality rates of bacterial phylogenetic groups (α-, β-, and γ-proteobacteria and the Cytophaga-Flavobacter cluster) detected by fluorescent in situ hybridization. Growth rates varied greatly (1.2- to 4.0-fold) among different groups, and they were related to environmental variables (chlorophyll a concentrations and temperature) in a group-specific fashion. Growth rates of α-proteobacteria, the most abundant group in all the samples examined, were generally lower than those of less abundant groups, including the Cytophaga-Flavobacter cluster and γ-proteobacteria. Grazing mortality rates and mean cell volumes varied little among different groups. These results provide insights into factors that affect distributions of different groups, but growth and grazing mortality alone did not fully explain bacterial community compositions at a broad phylogenetic level.

Liquid Serial Dilution Is Inferior to Solid Media for Isolation of Cultures Representative of the Phylum-Level Diversity of Soil Bacteria

ABSTRACT Representatives of only four well-characterized bacterial phyla were isolated from a pasture soil by using liquid serial dilution culture. In contrast, members of Acidobacteria, Verrucomicrobia, and Gemmatimonadetes and of other poorly represented bacterial lineages were isolated in earlier experiments with solidified versions of the same media. We conclude that, contrary to expectation, liquid serial dilution culture is inferior to culturing on solid media for isolating representatives of many bacterial phyla from soil.