A schematic diagram shows the concept of a porous microplate, where microalgae andbacteria can be cultured in wells at different distances from one another and can exchange nutrition and metabolites without physical contact. Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Half of the global atmospheric carbon is fixed from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and may be used as a sustainable bioenergy source.
Thephycoosphere is rich in organic carbon and is an ideal environment for growth ofbacteria. It has not been possible to track singlebacteria and their locations in relation to algal cells over the course of a population growth cycle.
Scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have created a new device to figure out how the phycoosphere structuresbacterial communities. Cell metabolite exchange can be done while blocking physical contact between culture wells.
The stretching out of the phycoosphere made it possible to quantify the growth and structure ofbacteria at different distances from the algal cells.
The team showed that when placed close to the algal culture, the algal-associatedbacteria grew faster.
The team discovered that certain bacteria respond to the production of organic carbon in the algal cells in a spatially dependent manner, with some of them adapting to living further away. Buying a house close to the supermarket makes it easier to get food, whereas buying a house further away makes it more difficult. This concept has important implications to understanding how the organisms in the water process carbon into CO2 and sequester it back into the atmosphere.
The result is that the yield of the diatom was 20 times greater than the yield of the batches. Efforts for increased and more efficient algal biomass production at large scales may be affected by this finding.
The system shows that there is a complex system of organisms in the microscale environment.
Jeffrey Kimbrel and Jessica Wollard are two of the contributors.
The ISME Journal has more information on the response of thebacteria to the spatial gradients of algal-derived nutrients in a porous microplate. There is a DOI: 10.1038/s41396-021-01147-x.
The ISME Journal has information.
In the neighborhood of microalgae, location is key tobacterial carbon use.
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