DATASET: Tracking microbial movement in saturated media with spectral induced polarization

Dataset for Tracking microbial movement in saturated media with spectral induced polarization by Saneiyan et al. 

Abstract

Pathogenic microorganisms in the subsurface can contaminate the soil and water supplies potentially posing great danger to human health. Early contamination detection routines rely on sparse direct sampling which is spatiotemporally limited. Thus, the path of microorganisms in the subsurface remains ambiguous and this can cause delays in detection of biohazardous threats. The geophysical spectral induced polarization (SIP) technique, sensitive to microbe’s presence and activity in porous media, is a promising method to monitor microbial transport pathways. Here we evaluated the efficiency of SIP in monitoring the chemotactic movement of Sporosarcina pasteurii in saturated porous media. A cylindrical sample holder was packed with Ottawa sand and saturated with sterile KCl solution to allow free movement of the microbes. The sample holder was oriented vertically and S. pasteurii was introduced at the bottom, allowing the movement of the microbes against gravity, towards a carbon source available at the top of the column. Temporal SIP measurements were collected at 3 regions of the sample holder: bottom (microbial injection point), middle and top (carbon source). Both the real (σ') and the imaginary (σ'') conductivity parts of the SIP signal increased over time with the σ^'' showing a peak signal magnitude following the upward movement of the microbes. We repeated the experiment excluding the carbon source in experiment 2 and omitting microbial injection in experiment 3. Unlike experiment 1, we did not observe any significant SIP signal changes in these two experiments. Our study is indicating there is a strong SIP signal correlation with microbial chemotaxis.