Biology and potential biogeochemical impacts of novel predatory flavobacteria

Abstract

Predatory bacteria are ubiquitous in aquatic environments and may be important players in the ecology and biogeochemistry of microbial communities. Three novel strains belonging to two genera of marine flavobacteria, Olleya and Tenacibaculum, were cultured from coastal sediments and found to be predatory on other bacteria on surfaces. Two published species of the genus Tenacibaculum were also observed to grow by lysis of prey bacteria, raising the possibility that predation may be a widespread lifestyle amongst marine flavobacteria, which are diverse and abundant in a variety of marine environments. The marine flavobacterial clade is known to include species capable of photoheterotrophy, scavenging of polymeric organic substances, pathogenesis on animals, the degradation and lysis of phytoplankton blooms and, now, predation on bacterial communities. Strains from the two genera were found to exhibit divergent prey specificities and growth yields when growing predatorily. Olleya sp. predatory cells accumulated to an order of magnitude greater cell densities than Tenacibaculum sp. cells on equivalent prey cell densities. Experiments were conducted to constrain the potential of the novel isolates to affect prey communities under more environmentally relevant conditions. An investigation of the minimum number of predatory cells needed to generate clearings of prey cells found that the inoculation of individual predatory flavobacteria cells can ultimately result in dense lytic swarms. In some cases, the susceptibility of particular prey species to lysis by a flavobacterial predator was found to vary based on the growth state of the prey cells or the presence of their spent growth media. A novel methodology for the experimental study of biofilms was used to assess the impact of exposure to predatory marine flavobacteria on the release of macronutrients from prey biofilms. The Olleya sp. predator had a stimulative effect on macronutrient release while the Tenacibaculum sp. did not, further suggesting the two groups of predators are adapted to different ecological niches.

Marine Actinobacteria: Screening for Predation Leads to the Discovery of Potential New Drugs against Multidrug-Resistant Bacteria

“…The absence of growth of strains isolates on agar-agar control and their growth on agar-agar in the presence of M. luteus confirmed the predation. All four selected Actinobacteria isolates showed ability to grow on different types of bacterial cells (Gram-positive, Gram-negative, and multidrug-resistant bacteria), demonstrating the lack of specificity of the predation process that requires the excretion of lytic enzymes, in line with previous reports for other predatory bacteria [44]. Most of these species also produced anti-microbial molecules on Bennett medium.…”

“…Banning (2010) [44] reported that predation could be extremely beneficial for bacteria living in oligotrophic marine environments, and marine Actinobacteria were shown to be highly metabolically active [45,46]. Morocco, because of its specific geographic position, bears a unique marine environment characterized by important temperature variations throughout the year [47].…”

The potential of facultative predatory Actinomycetota spp. and prospects in agricultural sustainability

“…The cell-tocell contact between the epibiotic predator and its prey is crucial for the transfer of compounds between their cells (Castelle and Banfield, 2018;Yakimov et al, 2022). As a consequence of the limited literature on culture-based investigations, our current state of understanding of the behavior of epibiotic lifestyles is relatively poor (Bor et al, 2020;Batinovic et al, 2021;Yakimov et al, 2022). However, Cross et al (2019) suggested that to clearly demonstrate cell-tocell contact, conditions that could enhance predator abundance to the degree that allows detailed microscopic characterization must be evaluated.…”