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Relation between presence‐absence of a visible nucleoid and metabolic activity in bacterioplankton cells
Author(s) -
Choi Joon W.,
Sherr Evelyn B.,
Sherr Barry F.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
limnology and oceanography
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.7
H-Index - 197
eISSN - 1939-5590
pISSN - 0024-3590
DOI - 10.4319/lo.1996.41.6.1161
Subject(s) - nucleoid , bacterioplankton , bacteria , biology , marine bacteriophage , cell , dna , microbiology and biotechnology , bacterial growth , nutrient , escherichia coli , biophysics , biochemistry , ecology , phytoplankton , genetics , gene
We investigated the report of Zweifel and Hagström that only a portion of marine bacteria contain nucleoids—the DNA‐containing regions of procaryotic cells—and that such bacteria correspond to the active or viable fraction of bacterioplankton. In Oregon coastal waters, 21–64% of bacteria had visible nucleoids; numbers of nucleoid‐visible (NV) bacteria were greater than numbers of metabolically active bacteria, based on cells with active electron transport systems (ETS) and intact cell membranes. During log growth of a marine isolate, proportions of NV and ETS‐active cells approached 100%. In stationary growth phase, the fraction of ETS‐active cells decreased rapidly, while that of NV cells remained high for 7 d. When starved cells of the isolate were resupplied with nutrient (50 mg liter ‒1 peptone), total cell number did not increase during the initial 6 h, but the proportion of NV cells increased from 27 to 100%, and that of ETS‐active cells from 6 to 75%. In an analogous experiment with a bacterioplankton assemblage, a similar trend was observed: the number of NV cells doubled during the initial 6 h prior to an increase in total cell counts. These results show that some bacteria without visible nucleoids are capable of becoming NV cells, and thus have DNA in a nucleoid region not detectable with the method used here.