Starved bacteria retain their size but lose culturability - Lessons from a 5000 years old undisturbed A-horizon

The vast majority of soil bacteria are unable to form visible colonies on agar media. One hypothesis is that unculturable soil bacteria are dwarf cells that may either be small starved forms derived from larger species or represent inherently small species. We test the hypotheses that cells of extremely starved soil bacterial communities are smaller and less culturable than cells of bacterial communities from a richer soil, and that culturability is related to cell size by comparing an extremely starved community from a 5200-year-old A-horizon buried under a burial mound with a community from a modern agricultural A-horizon.We serially filtered cell suspensions through filters with successively smaller pore sizes (0.8 μm, 0.6 μm and 0.4 μm) and assessed total cell number and culturability, i.e. the ability to form colonies on two types of agar media, in each size fraction. Cell size distributions were assessed in unfiltered suspensions. Average cell size was only moderately reduced in the starved community, where culturability was low for all size classes. In contrast, culturability was much higher in the modern community, where culturability decreased dramatically with decreasing cell sizes.     

秋、冬季节刺参养殖池塘浮游细菌数量变化规律的研究

应用平板稀释涂布培养计数法和荧光显微镜计数法,对秋、冬季(2008年9月～2009年2月)刺参养殖池塘水体中的浮游细菌数量变化规律进行了分析。结果表明,吖啶橙染色直接计数法(AODC)测得细菌总数的变化范围是1.0×106～2.1×107个/ml,活菌直接计数法(DVC)测得活菌总数的变化范围是4.0×105～5.7×106个/ml。异养细菌平板计数法(HPC)测得异养细菌数量为0.6×102～1.7×105CFU/ml。TCBS平板培养的弧菌数量在6.6×103CFU/ml以下。从时间分布看,刺参养殖池塘水体中浮游细菌数量最高值出现在10月份,最低值出现在1月份,秋季细菌数量显著高于冬季(P0.01)。从空间分布看,水体底层细菌数量显著高于表层(P0.05)。利用SPSS13.0软件对所得到的数据进行统计分析表明,同一样品不同计数方法获得的细菌总数数值之间存在显著的相关性(P0.01)。