Phenotypic heterogeneity affects culturability of Nitrosomonas mobilis Ms1.

Most microorganisms are difficult to culture in laboratory environments. We hypothesize that this problem is caused by growth variation among cells. If growth rates of individual cells are various, efficiency of subculture may be low because subcultured cells are not always fast grower. Thus, our research aim is to verify effects of the phenotypic heterogeneity on cultivation efficiency and what signal affects variability of growth rate. In this study, Nitrosomonas mobilis Ms1 was used as a model of difficult to culture organisms.

绝大多数微生物难以在实验室环境中进行培养。我们推测该难题的成因在于细胞间的生长异质性：若单个细胞的生长速率存在差异，传代培养的效率往往偏低，这是由于被接种的细胞并非均为快速生长的个体。因此，本研究的目标在于验证表型异质性对培养效率的影响，以及究竟是何种信号调控了生长速率的异质性。本研究选取移动亚硝化单胞菌（Nitrosomonas mobilis）Ms1作为难培养微生物的研究模型。