What is it about?
We grew the diatom P. tricornutum in two different nutrient conditions and observed the different appearance/disappearance over time of five dominant bacterial families. After a thorough review of published works on the different bacteria of interest, we reconstructed the possible network of interaction between the diatom and the bacteria. Based on this network we built a qualitative mathematical model that was able to capture the community dynamics.
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Why is it important?
Diatoms are of interest for various biotechnological applications. In large scale, industrial culture set-ups, it is often unavoidable to experience contamination from other organisms. Being able to predict and control the "crash" point of the diatom culture using the community composition as indicator would be a significant biotechnological advantage. The mathematical model extends a "generalized Lotka-Volterra" to include metabolic dependencies using Monod-type terms.
Perspectives
Our work is a first step towards a more in-depth study of the parameters controlling the status of large scale cultures. More specific co-culturing experiments, including more meta-omics measurements, could be used to build quantitative mathematical models that can then be used e.g. to monitor and predict the best point for harvesting the diatom culture.
Dr Antonella Succurro
Universitat zu Koln
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Dynamics of the Bacterial Community Associated with Phaeodactylum tricornutum Cultures, Processes, December 2017, MDPI AG,
DOI: 10.3390/pr5040077.
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