Any suggestions methods regarding to assess microbial stress and community structure,in particular under the electrical current stress ? simple ones are highly preferable, but sophisticated techniques are also good.
It is basically a waste water treatment system. Let me put it in this way, once we drive electrodes to the waste water treatment system, that would for sure change the environment and subsequently the microbial community structure would change as result of the DC voltage affects.
The main questions are, how can I study this change?, and how can I know the microbial cells are under stress ?
Lagiem,
To be able to make suggestions that would be most helpful to you, I need to know more about what you are interested in studying? Is it human microbiomes, aquatic habitats, soil, waste water treatment systems, or? How do electrical currents affect and used in the system you want to study?
Thank you Robert John Wolff , it is a waste water treatment system. let me put it in this way, once we drive electrodes to the waste water treatment system, that would for sure change the environment and subsequently the microbial community structure would change as result of the DC voltage affects. the questions are, how can I study this change and how can I know the microbial cells are under stress ?
Hope this clear !
Best,
First, for study methods of overall effect in the system you could culture and determine if the major bacterial species populations shift in culture and/or you could look at the microbiome (metagenomics) of the population before, during and after your treatment. This would be looking at whether the stress changes the species composition and abundance, which would be a finding of perturbation by the electricity or a reaction to a stressor. Doing it at this larger community level would be valuable.
The few studied areas of stress responses by bacteria, that I am aware of, involve production of heat shock proteins, the starvation response, and the production of antibiotic resistance when stressed. The first two topics are dealt with in the first link below. I think seeing if heat shock proteins are produced with your voltage introduction would be interesting. The second note is interesting and expands the ideas somewhat, and the link below also gives you access to the articles which have cited this paper. The third link is to an overview paper on antibiotic resistance development due to stress. I think using the development of Resistance would be the easiest method for you to use. If you culture the water bacteria on standard media used at the Wastewater Plant with added antibiotics (I would choose at least 3 types) you could detect the number of resistant bacteria (per volume) before the test (repeat over time) and then following the 'stressor' you could sample and plate out the bacteria again to see if the number of resistant colonies (CFU's) has increased. If this give you some idea of an effect, you could do other more complex studies to follow up.
http://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-3-642-30141-4_79#page-1
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1326283/
http://jac.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/05/22/jac.dks196.full
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