Ken AOI
Isolation of methanogenic microbial community from marine subsurface sediment using continuous-flow bioreactor
Takashi YAMAGUCHI
Methane of vast quantity is generated from deep marine subsurface by microbe activity, but it is not understood which microbe performs methane-production. Therefore, I cultivated of a methanogenic microbial community using a continuous-flow bioreactor from marine subsurface sediments. The reactor is so called down-flow hanging sponge (DHS) reactor that equips polyurethane sponges serving microbial habitats. After 289 days operation, methane-production by the creature activity was observed. Fluorescence in situ hybridization analysis showed that metabolically highly active microbial cells having various morphologies presented in the reactor. 16S rRNA gene based clone analyses indicated that the successful of growth of phylogenetically diverse microbial components in the reactor, which dominated phylotypes closely related to environmental sequences that have been frequently observed from a variety of subsurface environments. Using the enrichment of the methanogenic community as the subsequent transfer inocula, traditional batch-type cultivations led to the successful isolation of several anaerobic microbes including those methanogens. These results substantiate that the continuous-flow DHS bioreactor is an excellent system to cultivate numerous fastidious microbes in marine subsurface sediments, and hence to enable the consequent isolation of previously uncultivated microbes.
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