Dear RG community, I’d like to hear what do you think on the following observation:
I have two bacterial strains, A and B. They don’t show antagonism between each other, they seem to be good friends.
But when A colonies are killed and lised on plates, the growth of B is strongly inhibited around it (!)
So it seems like an antiB compound is released by A dead cells (!)
Interestingly this antiB activity disappears when both strains are previously cocultured (!!!)
So if A is cultured alone they presumably accumulate an antiB compound. But if A is cultured together with B, they don’t accumulate the hypothetic antiB compound instead. Moreover, I have some clues that suggest that the antiB substance is not in the cytoplasm but in the disrupted membranes (!!!)
I would like to know what you'd recommend me for approaching this issue.
Thanks in advance!
Hi Phil. I lyse A colonies with chloroform vapor. I control that it fully evaporate before pooring the B lawn.
Have you tried to identify and characterize your antiB compound(s) in terms of its chemical entity? I am speculating that your antiB compound (s) might be antimicrobial agent(s) produced by the reaction between any one of the intracellular microbial metabolites and chloroform/or any of the media components. I suggest you to conduct some sort of chemical analysis. You can also look for other physical or biological methods for lysis of the cells.
This is an interesting observation in microbial community. It can be a big project to study the mechanism behind this sort of interactions in microbial communities.
Hi Alemu. Thank you so much for your coments.
We are looking for and testing other methods of cells disruption already (sonication, freezing/thawing...)
This is not the main objective of my postdoc research, but it seems so interesting that I'm putting more and more attention on this.
Thank you again. I will considerer the chemestry approach.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Physical Sciences
- Materials Science
- Materials Chemistry
- Polymer Chemistry