What is it about?
In nature, most microbes don't occur alone: multiple species co-exist and work together to perform important processes for the nutrient (carbon, nitrogen, ...) cycles that enable life on earth. In this research we set out to find a strategy to preserve these microbial communities (also called microbiomes) at low temperatures (-80°C). We were succesful by adding specific cryoprotective agents that made sure not only that all different species in the community survived but that they were present after thawing in the same amount and as functional as before freezing.
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Why is it important?
Currently, most microbes that were isolated thus far are being stored in culture collections as single species. However, in nature microbial processes are rarely performed by a single type of microbe. Because of the lack of proper strategy to preserve mixed communities most of our microbial biotechnology also relies on single species, whereas sometimes mixed communities could be more stable and better performing. Hence, we believe cryopreserving these mixed communites will enable researchers to have reproducible mixed communities available to develop biotechnological applications. Additionally, important biodiversity (such as microbes that cannot be isolated because they cannot grow as a pure culture) can be preserved. We hope that culture collections or biological resource centers can adopt our method.
Perspectives
Since it's publication our lab has adopted the cryopreservation method for many other mixed communities on top of the three communities we initially tested. Although generally my colleagues were successful in employing the method an important consideration is matrix effects. This was already clear for the fecal microbiome in the original paper: generally it is more difficult to preserve if homogenous mixing is difficult. However, we did have some nice results for methanotrophic microbiomes in sediment that was directly preserved with our DMSO method. Apart from evaluating the method with different matrices, I feel that a generalized lyophilization strategy for mixed communities should be important in future research. Our group has had some success on this front for the fecal microbiome.
Mr Frederiek-Maarten Kerckhof
Universiteit Gent
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Optimized Cryopreservation of Mixed Microbial Communities for Conserved Functionality and Diversity, PLoS ONE, June 2014, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0099517.
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