Assessing Microbial Monitoring Methods for Challenging Environmental Strains and Cultures

This paper focuses on the comparison of microbial biomass increase (cell culture growth) using field-relevant testing methods and moving away from colony counts. Challenges exist in exploring antimicrobial growth fastidious strains, poorly culturable bacteria bacterial communities environmental interest. Thus, various approaches have been explored to follow that can be efficient surrogates for classical optical density or colony-forming unit measurements. Here, six species grown pure were monitored density, ATP assays, DNA concentrations 16S rRNA qPCR. Each these different advantages disadvantages concerning measurement activity complex field samples. The used as model systems monitoring were: Acetobacterium woodii, Bacillus subtilis, Desulfovibrio vulgaris, Geoalkalibacter subterraneus, Pseudomonas putida Thauera aromatica. All four techniques found successfully measure detect cell biomass/activity differences, though shape accuracy each technique varied between species. correlate best with other three assays (ATP, rRNA-targeted qPCR) provide rapid extraction, consistency replicates potential downstream analysis. determined universal method