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Metabolically active bacteria detected with click chemistry in low organic matter rainwater
Citation:
Guillemette, R., M. Harwell, AND C. Brown. Metabolically active bacteria detected with click chemistry in low organic matter rainwater. PLOS ONE . Public Library of Science, San Francisco, CA, 18(5):e0285816, (2023). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0285816
Impact/Purpose:
Rainwater microbiology is a potentially significant field of science that has received relatively little attention to date. In this manuscript the fundamentals of rainwater microbiology are discussed within the context of rainwater reuse. Since some regions of the US Pacific Northwest receive considerable rainfall there is an interest in using collected and stored rainwater to meet community water demand during periods of episodic drought (dry seasons) in the same region. This manuscript presents a study designed to understand the microbial water quality of freshly collected rainwater and present data from three rain collections taken in Newport, Oregon.
Description:
Rain contains encapsulated bacteria that can be transported over vast distances during relatively short periods of time. However, the ecological significance of bacteria in “precontact” rainwater -rainwater prior to contact with non-atmospheric surfaces -remains relatively undefined given the methodological challenges of studying low-abundance microbes in a natural assemblage. Here, we implement single-cell “click” chemistry in a novel application to detect the protein synthesis of bacteria in precontact rainwater samples as a measure of metabolic activity. Using epifluorescence microscopy, we find approximately 103 – 104 bacteria cells mL-1 with up to 7.2% of the observed cells actively synthesizing protein. Additionally, our measurement of less than 30 µM total organic carbon in the samples show that some rainwater bacteria can metabolize substrates in very low organic matter conditions, comparable to extremophiles in the deep ocean. Overall, our results raise new questions for the field of rainwater microbiology and may help inform efforts to develop quantitative microbial risk assessments for the appropriate use of harvested rainwater.
URLs/Downloads:
DOI: Metabolically active bacteria detected with click chemistry in low organic matter rainwater