Abstract
The aim of this study was to quantitatively characterize the morphology of the filamentous microorganisms Aspergillus terreus ATCC 20542 and Streptomyces rimosus ATCC 10970, cocultivated in stirred tank bioreactors, and to characterize their mutual influence with the use of quantitative image analysis. Three distinct coculture initiation strategies were applied: preculture versus preculture, spores versus spores and preculture versus preculture with time delay for one of the species. Bioreactor cocultures were accompanied by parallel monoculture controls. The results recorded for the mono- and cocultures were compared in order to investigate the effect of cocultivation on the morphological evolution of A. terreus and S. rimosus. Morphology-related observations were also confronted with the analysis of secondary metabolism. The morphology of the two studied filamentous species strictly depended on the applied coculture initiation strategy. In the cocultures initiated by the simultaneous inoculation, S. rimosus gained domination or advance over A. terreus. The latter microorganism dominated only in these experiments in which S. rimosus was introduced with a delay.
Highlights
The conducted experiments aimed at the identification of microbial morphology in coculture and finding the mutual influence between A. terreus and S. rimosus
The production of secondary metabolites and bioprocess kinetics was tested in detail by Boruta et al [30], which allows for a wider discussion of the relationship between morphology and metabolism of the cocultivated filamentous microorganisms
In the A. terreus and S. rimosus cocultures, the microbial morphology depends to the highest extent on the applied coculture initiation strategy
Summary
The application of microbial cocultures, understood as the simultaneous cultivation of two or more microorganisms in the individual closed environment, is a well-known strategy to improve their metabolic diversity. Antifungal and antibacterial substances are produced by filamentous microorganisms in order to increase their advantage over other hostile microorganisms. The compounds produced by one of the species can be biotransformed by the symbiotic microorganism. Owing to the aforementioned multilevel dependencies, microorganisms cultivated in the artificial laboratory bioreactor cocultures may activate biosynthetic pathways that are hidden or cryptic in the monocultures [3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. The application of the cocultures can result in the enhancement of metabolites production [10]
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