Bacteria Can Have 2 Types Of Biofilm

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...realize you guys are not keeping salmon, but...

http/www.nist.gov/mml/biochemical/fishflu-110811.cfm

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This morning's tidbit is about that miraculous and wonderful stuff we all stick our arms in and in which our fish live... it's the good 'ole world of:


Weird Water


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(who is in a good mood because he changed out his tank hoses, lol)

 

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As the oceans warm, the advantage tips a bit toward bacteria and other things that can cause disease in coral growths. Some of the guys that work on this stuff are now actually using real-time polymerase chain reaction technology to better identify the culprits that are attacking the coral:

http/www.coralcoe.org.au/news_stories/diseasediagnosis.html

anyway, that's today's coffee reading

WD
(yesterday I had the feeling that for once I was getting my water changes and other care just right.. because my fish were just really frisky and deep-colored. You guys ever notice that about a tank, that you can just hit a sweet spot that the fish really like?)

 

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This morning's reading comes to us courtesy of the gateway to the US west (yes, they have a zoo out there...)

http/www.stlzoo.org/home/featurednews/hellbenderbreeding

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[Bignose]

I spent many a day as child in the St. Louis zoo. It is a true gem of the MidWest -- still 100% free to get into, too. It is worth the $ to ride the train around the park, though.

 

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I spent many a day as child in the St. Louis zoo. It is a true gem of the MidWest -- still 100% free to get into, too. It is worth the $ to ride the train around the park, though.

OK, that settles it, I've got to try and get to the St. Louis Zoo and ride the little train! I think St. Louis might be the location of the next International Aquatic Gardeners Association meeting and I've been going to all of those recently and plan to go to this one if it happens. Hey, maybe I'll see another TFF member there, it has happened before! Zoo's can be great. One of the best days I ever spent all by myself was at the San Diego Zoo. They have a really nice restaurant sort of suspended in the trees in the middle of the zoo and I remember sipping wine and looking out across the zoo!

For today's reading I'm taking you guys back into the hardware realm to a neat new thing some engineers have worked on up in little Rhode Island:

http/news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2011/12/cep

Wouldn't this be cool if it contributed to better clean-up of some of the trouble sites in the world that our fish suffer from!

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ps. Wish me luck guys, putting on the tux tonight to sing the annual holiday concert in the big cathedral - I'm sure some of you do that sort of stuff too.

 

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More on limbs today guys:

http/uonews.uoregon.edu/archive/news-release/2011/12/new-theory-emerges-where-some-fish-became-four-limbed-creatures

WD

 

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Do Bacteria communicate by TOUCH? LOL, gotta enjoy this one!

http/www.ia.ucsb.edu/pa/display.aspx?pkey=2658

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Morning friends, today's story comes from up in Alberta (wonder if spring is arriving up there yet, lol)

http/www.news.ualberta.ca/article.aspx?id=BC2783C4B57C47D39C4E229E05AF25A7

WD

 

[OldMan47]

OK, so you have found interesting stuff about bacteria WD. Now for the real fun. It seems that research has fairly well indicated that archaea, not bacteria, dominate the nitrogen cycle, at last in marine settings. Freshwater settings are unexplored by comparison. They are usually called AOA in the literature.

Here is some more food for thought for that morning cup

http/onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1574-6976.2009.00179.x/full#b23
http/niglas.academia.edu/jianjunwang/Papers/342365/Heterogeneity_of_archaeal_and_bacterial_ammonia-oxidizing_communities_in_Lake_Taihu_China
http/mel.xmu.edu.cn/upload_paper/2011623165117-K6K6SY.pdf

 

[waterdrop]

OK, so you have found interesting stuff about bacteria WD. Now for the real fun. It seems that research has fairly well indicated that archaea, not bacteria, dominate the nitrogen cycle, at last in marine settings. Freshwater settings are unexplored by comparison. They are usually called AOA in the literature.

Here is some more food for thought for that morning cup

http/onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1574-6976.2009.00179.x/full#b23
http/niglas.academia.edu/jianjunwang/Papers/342365/Heterogeneity_of_archaeal_and_bacterial_ammonia-oxidizing_communities_in_Lake_Taihu_China
http/mel.xmu.edu.cn/upload_paper/2011623165117-K6K6SY.pdf

Good Morning OM, A nice pleasant surprise this morning as I came in to post a tidbit. I will have to go in for a read of your articles!

The one I came across is another bacterial topic not so directly associated with our hobby per se but still food for thought since we do find ourselves talking about cyano types sometimes:

http/www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=120151&CultureCode=en

WD

 

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Today's note comes from the University of South Florida where they've found that a fungicide commonly used on golf courses and other places can really make a mess of freshwater ecosystems:

http/news.usf.edu/article/templates/?a=4462&z=119

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[TwoTankAmin]

I have been reading a lot about the whole AOA vs AOB discussion. What I have not been able to find is one crucial piece of information. All of the research uses genes to determine the counts for the Archaea and the bacteria themselves and then further counts are done for the amo genes for each. Then the numbers are counted.

What I can not find is any information which examines the relative oxidizing capacity of AOA and AOB. Is it not possible, for example, that a fixed number of typical AOB can oxidize more ammonia than a similar number of AOA? If so this would change some of the tentative conclusions many studies reached. Moreover, I have read that the bacteria can have more than one copy of each of the genes (operons) whereas the Archaea have a single copy of each. Since there is no hard and fast rule as to how many copies of the two genes a bacterium can have, there is no way to deduce the actual numbers of AOB present. I have been trying to find any sort of research on this.

Here are some interesting studies- unfortunately they are just the abstracts:
Nitrification driven by bacteria and not archaea in nitrogen-rich grassland soils
Characterization and quantification of ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) and bacteria (AOB) in a nitrogen-removing reactor using T-RFLP and qPCR
But these and other studies would lend some support that enough is not known about the relative contributions of each to the ammonia oxidation process in different environments to draw concrete conclusions.

 

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Well I have finally begun reading some of the AOA articles. Difficult reading to say the least but so far I would have to agree that a lot of sections point to "not enough research and data gathering yet." It does serve as a humbling reminder that these are complex ecosystems that we like to enjoy and talk about and we can always be surprised by new discoveries. WD

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Here are a few interesting AOA vs AOB studies-
Ammonium Availability Affects the Ratio of Ammonia-Oxidizing Bacteria to Ammonia-Oxidizing Archaea in Simulated Creek Ecosystems
Ammonia oxidation rates and nitrification in the Arabian Sea
Low-ammonia niche of ammonia-oxidizing archaea in rotating biological contactors of a municipal wastewater treatment plant

The most important quick fact I got from the 2nd study is "Nitrification rates were not directly correlated to AOA or AOB amoA abundance."

One thing is crystal clear:

It seems that research has fairly well indicated that archaea, not bacteria, dominate the nitrogen cycle, at last in marine settings.

This is not the case by any means. If nothing else, it is a factual mistatement in the absence of the discovery of any nitrite oxidizing archaea. And I have not seen a single study that proves AOA do more of the ammonia oxidizing than the AOB. The only evidence being presented are gene counts for the archaea and the bacteria as well as for their respective amoA genes. I am starting to see some research which shows such counts may not be good indications of what is going on in terms of the nitrogen cycle and whether archaea or bacteria are actually doing most of the work.