Competition during submerged mixed culture of Geotrichum candidum and Penicillium camembertii on glucose and threonine

Abstract

Geotrichum candidum and Penicillium camembertii were cultivated in pure and mixed cultures on glucose and threonine. In pure cultures, G. candidum used glucose as a carbon and an energy source and threonine only as a nitrogen source, even after glucose exhaustion. Contrarily, when growing in isolation, P. camembertii used simultaneously threonine and glucose as carbon sources. A diauxic growth was recorded during the mixed culture of both species, which competed for glucose, the sole carbon source available for G. candidum growth, leading to higher glucose consumption rates than those recorded during pure cultures, while after glucose exhaustion, low growth was recorded in a second step, showing a 'competition' for threonine, the sole remaining carbon and nitrogen sources, confirmed by the increase of 1.0+/-0.1 log of the G. candidum Colony Forming Units. 'Competition' between G. candidum and P. camembertii for the limiting substrate was found to have a positive effect on growth, since it did not lead to the annihilation of one species, as usually observed, but in their coexistence, leading to a rather similar final number of the CFUs for the two populations. 'Competition' resulted in the absence of assimilation of the second available carbon substrate (lactate) as previously observed, or its use only as a nitrogen source, as was the case for threonine in this work.