Abstract
Bacterial communities can be described by their enzymatic potentials using the Biolog substrate utilisation assay. We have investigated tetrazolium reduction and cell growth during incubation of Pseudomonas fluorescens MM6 and soil bacteria in Biolog plates. Increasing the inoculum size shortened the lag phase before formazan formation. For the soil bacteria, increasing the inoculum also resulted in a higher rate constant of formazan formation, and the final number of wells with formazan formation increased. Both MM6 and soil bacteria proliferated in the wells both with and without specific carbon sources after inoculation. With soil bacteria, the presence of clay, humic substances, and dissolved organic matter increased the background coloration and may have resulted in cell growth. The growth led to increased culturability (CFU/AODC) and rate of colony-appearance and decreased the diversity of the bacterial communities within each well. Metabolic fingerprinting of bacterial communities using Biolog plates thus depends on aerobic growth of a fraction of the community.
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© 1997 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Winding, A., Hendriksen, N.B. (1997). Biolog Substrate Utilisation Assay for Metabolic Fingerprints of Soil Bacteria: Incubation Effects. In: Insam, H., Rangger, A. (eds) Microbial Communities. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-60694-6_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-60694-6_18
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