Publication Details

Category Text Publication
Reference Category Journals
DOI 10.3791/58033
Title (Primary) Characterizing microbiome dynamics – flow cytometry based workflows from pure cultures to natural communities
Author Lambrecht, J.; Schattenberg, F.; Harms, H.; Müller, S.
Source Titel JoVe-Journal of Visualized Experiments
Year 2018
Department UMB
Issue 137
Page From e58033
Language englisch
Keywords Environmental Sciences; Issue 137; Flow cytometry; single cell analytics; microbial community dynamics; microbiome; sample preparation flow cytometry; bioprocess control; monitoring cell dynamics; cytometric data analysis; flowCHIC; flowCyBar
Abstract The investigation of pure cultures and monitoring of microbial community dynamics is vital to understand and control natural ecosystems and technical applications driven by microorganisms. Next generation sequencing methods are widely utilized to resolve microbiomes, but they are generally resource and time intensive and deliver mostly qualitative information. Flow cytometric microbiome analysis does not suffer from those disadvantages and can provide relative subcommunity abundances and absolute cell numbers at-line. Although it does not deliver direct phylogenetic information, it can enhance the analysis depth and resolution of sequencing approaches. In sharp contrast to medical applications in both research and routine settings, flow cytometry is still not widely used for microbiome analysis. Missing information on sample preparation and data analysis pipelines may create an entry barrier for the researchers facing microbiome analysis challenges that would often be textbook flow cytometry applications. Here, we present three comprehensive workflows for pure cultures, complex communities in clear medium and complex communities in challenging matrices, respectively. We describe individual sampling and fixation procedures and optimized staining protocols for the respective sample sets. We elaborate the cytometric analysis with a complex research centered and an application focused bench top device, describe the cell sorting procedure and suggest data analysis packages. We furthermore propose important experimental controls and apply the presented workflows to the respective sample sets.
Persistent UFZ Identifier https://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=20939&ufzPublicationIdentifier=20686
Lambrecht, J., Schattenberg, F., Harms, H., Müller, S. (2018):
Characterizing microbiome dynamics – flow cytometry based workflows from pure cultures to natural communities
J. Vis. Exp. (137), e58033 10.3791/58033