Abstract

The potential spread of infectious diseases in response to climate change and rising sea surface temperatures in temperate regions has been a growing concern for the past several decades. Extreme heat waves in the North Atlantic and North Sea regions have been correlated with an increase in human Vibrio infections; of particular concern to human health are Vibrio cholerae, Vibrio parahaemolyticus, and Vibrio vulnificus. While these species are well-known to cause disease in humans, most environmental strains are not pathogenic. Studying not only the behavior of the pathogenic strains, but that of non-pathogenic environmental isolates, may better elucidate their ecological relationship in their native microbiome and the dispersal of these species in coastal regions. Using red fluorescent protein-tagged and gentamycin-resistant V. cholerae, V. parahaemolyticus, and V. vulnificus strains, we investigated whether increasing temperatures confer greater competitive fitness to these species when incubated within a natural North Sea water sample still containing its microbiome in a small-scale niche investigation. Increased incubation temperatures alone did not confer a competitive advantage to V. cholerae, V. parahaemolyticus, and V. vulnificus. The microbial community could limit Vibrio growth at all temperatures. To the best of our knowledge, we also demonstrate the first (albeit unintentional) genetic modification of multiple species of marine bacteria through the introduction of a genetically modified V. vulnificus strain into a natural water sample in a contained system.

Highlights

  • Rising sea surface temperatures (SST) have been studied for their pronounced impact on the abundance, distribution, and composition of marine ecosystems (Poloczanska et al, 2013)

  • In order to test whether increased SST alone led to an increased abundance or elevated competitive-fitness of V. cholerae, V. parahaemolyticus, and V. vulnificus, we inoculated filtersterilized Sea Water (SSW) and non-sterile Native Sea Water (NaSW) samples with four different strains of red fluorescent protein (RFP)-labeled, GmR -Vibrio strains (VcR-7-2, VpR-DSMZ, VpR-NSI, and VvR-21) in triplicate (Table 1)

  • Since no bacterial growth was observed from the Natural Sea Water (NaSW) and Sterile Sea Water (SSW) negative controls, we conclude that all growth on the selective plates from the experimental plates comes from the added labeled Vibrio strains and do not arise from a natural genetic resistance to Gm in the native microbial sample

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Summary

Introduction

Rising sea surface temperatures (SST) have been studied for their pronounced impact on the abundance, distribution, and composition of marine ecosystems (Poloczanska et al, 2013). While the plates from the SSW incubations contained only V. vulnificus-like colonies and were free from contaminations, many morphologically different bacterial colonies formed on the NaSW plates in addition to the VvR-21 colonies (Figure 6). This non-Vibrio growth was seen in all three temperature incubations and was observed only after 24 h co-incubation with VvR-21 in NaSW.

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