Journal
ALGAL RESEARCH-BIOMASS BIOFUELS AND BIOPRODUCTS
Volume 68, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.algal.2022.102892
Keywords
Co-cultures; Growth-promoting bacteria; Marinobacter; Algoriphagus; Oceanicaulis
Categories
Funding
- Department of Energy [EE0008122]
- U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) under the FY19 Bioenergy Technologies Office Multi-Topic Funding Opportunity Announcement [DE-EE0008902]
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Although bacterial amendments can enhance algal productivity and stability, their commercial-scale utilization is limited. The results of experiments showed that the effects of environmental factors and bacterial amendments on algae cultivation are complex, and the positive effects of bacterial amendments were not significant in field experiments. Future research should focus on understanding the relationship between bacteria and algal partners and developing synthetic ecological approaches for designing and testing consortia.
Although bacterial amendments can enhance algal productivity and stability, the development of algal-bacteria consortia for commercial-scale utilization is limited. Here, we used an established high-throughput approach to generate algal-bacteria consortia, and tested consortia performance at spatial scales from microplates to 320 L raceway ponds. We used both lab and field-reared strains of Nannochloropsis oceanica to build consortia. In some experiments, we imposed environmental perturbations to test the ability of bacteria to enhance algal culture stability. In repeated assays at the scale of well plates, flasks, and bioreactors, strong effects of bacterial amendments on N. oceanica were observed. These effects were most dramatic when cultures experienced stressors such as temperature perturbations or removal of CO2 augmentation. Isolates that were advanced for field testing included species in the genera Algoriphagus, Oceanicaulis, and Marinobacter. When consortia were generated in the field, positive effects of bacterial amendments were not observed. The amended bacteria were outcompeted, and bacterial community composition across treatments converged after the first grow out. These results highlight the complexity of using consortia in open systems, where interactions between the existing bacterial community, inoculated bacteria, and changing environmental conditions are layered upon other dif-ferences in scale and cultivation regimes. Moreover, functionally redundant bacteria are likely present in the field. Following this work, we hypothesize that tight interactions (e.g., obligate relationships between partners) will scale more predictably to outdoor systems. We suggest relying on true synthetic ecological approaches in which the relationships between bacteria and algae partners are well understood, or synthetic ecological ap-proaches coupled with high throughput approaches to design and test consortia. We also recommend future work to examine the effect of algae-bacteria inoculation ratios on productivity and stability, track dynamics of partners through time, and manage ponds to retain beneficial symbioses.
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