Is it possible to grow different bacteria in a fermenter/chemostat under common conditions?
I have a panel of bacteria, some anaerobic, some microaerophilic, some requires Columbia blood agar, some trypticase medium, some Luria-Bertani.
Is it possible to grow them with a single liquid medium, for instance a brain infusion? Would anaerobic condition be suitable for all? They don't need to grow at 100% efficiency, but at least not die.
Thanks
First you can try their compatibility and growth rate on different agar media...or on NB medium.
Thanks, but isn't there a kind of shortcut? I though that growing bacteria in the fermenter should be an easy task, thus there should be some kind of protocol 'one-fits-all' used to grow mixes of bacteria...
Dear Luigi,
Prof. Nikolay's suggestion could be followed. In addition to it, you may serial dilute the samples and culture them in agar plates in various conditions (micro-aerophilic, anaerobic, aerobic). Given that you have a consortia, you could get some positive colonies in each of the assays; the ones, which are able to grow in a similar environment on the plates, could be pre-cultures in flasks. Post the pre-culture, you can simultaneously plate a portion of the pre-culture and assess if they are the same colones, which grew on your plates during the first culture. Now proceed with three fermentations following the three mentioned conditions. Alternatively, as you have asked for a shortcut, my personal recommendation would be to culture them in defined media (specific for aerobic, anerobic) and plate a portion of the culture and proceed to microscopic observation. These are my personal suggestions. Other researchers may choose to differ. It is advisable to perform a flask culture before you head to a mid-sized scale fermentation set-up.
Hello Luigi;
I agree with Nikolay Vassilev and Navnit Kumar Ramamoorthy answers, but I think you still need to clarify your question. Please specify if the bacteria strains that you have are pure isolates. What type of bacteria you have?
If you isolated these bacteria in the particular conditions you mentioned, I see two possible approaches; first, since the different bacteria grew in specific culture physicochemical conditions one can suppose that you don´t have other option than to assess if they grow in every specific condition (e.g. aerobic vs. anaerobic, and so on). This is more or less the approach mentioned in the previous answers. The second approach is that you may try to culture the bacterial consortia in a single rich- nutrient medium under aerobic conditions and see what strains manage to grow in such medium. First, I would try the strains separately, and then I would test the consortium. This is important as you may observe differences in the growth behavior when the bacteria grow separately or as a consortium, as in the latter the different bacterial groups can affect the behavior of the others. The culture medium can be APT and MRS for Lactobacillus species, or another general nutrient-rich medium depending on the type of your bacterial strains. I´ve used this approach to grow bacteria isolated from soil, but in my case I didn´t need to mix them into a consortium.
I agree with my colleagues that you don´t need a fermenter/chemostat for this. Initially you just need to check bacterial growth in shake-flasks cultures.
Hope this helps. Regards
I have been thinking of the following:
E. faecium, L. rhamnosus, S. gallolyticus, E. faecalis, E.coli, B. fragilis.
They are all intestinal, so they should grow in anaerobic conditions and will come from pure cultures. I understand that a consortium will not allow all bacteria to grow at their optimum, but these are also the conditions in vivo: in the intestine some bacteria will grow well below their optimum but the conditions are the same for all.
What I am looking for is a single medium that can sustain all the members of the consortium (that is: not killing some species for lack of fundamental nutrients), perhaps a brain-hearth infusion.
Dear Luigi,
Rof. Rogelio is spot on and your approach is logical; but I just have a query: when you have isolated intestinal bacteria, wouldn't it mean that they were growing at a lower pH in that specific environment. I am not so sure about this. However, if that is the case, then you may have to adapt the bacteria to general lab culture temperatures. You may additionally consider this as well.
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