Direct single-cell biomass estimates for marine bacteria via Archimedes’ principle
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Manalis_Direct single-cell.pdf
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Author(s)
Cermak, Nathan
Becker, Jamie William
Knudsen, Scott
Manalis, Scott R
Polz, Martin F
Chisholm, Sallie (Penny)
Date Issued
December 2016
Journal
The ISME Journal
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Citation
Cermak, Nathan; Becker, Jamie W; Knudsen, Scott M; Chisholm, Sallie W; Manalis, Scott R and Polz, Martin F. “Direct Single-Cell Biomass Estimates for Marine Bacteria via Archimedes’ Principle.” The ISME Journal 11, no. 3 (December 2016): 825–828 © 2017 International Society for Microbial Ecology (ISME)
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Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Microbes are an essential component of marine food webs and biogeochemical cycles, and therefore precise estimates of their biomass are of significant value. Here, we measured single-cell biomass distributions of isolates from several numerically abundant marine bacterial groups, including Pelagibacter (SAR11), Prochlorococcus and Vibrio using a microfluidic mass sensor known as a suspended microchannel resonator (SMR). We show that the SMR can provide biomass (dry mass) measurements for cells spanning more than two orders of magnitude and that these estimates are consistent with other independent measures. We find that Pelagibacterales strain HTCC1062 has a median biomass of 11.9±0.7 fg per cell, which is five- to twelve-fold smaller than the median Prochlorococcus cell’s biomass (depending upon strain) and nearly 100-fold lower than that of rapidly growing V. splendidus strain 13B01. Knowing the biomass contributions from various taxonomic groups will provide more precise estimates of total marine biomass, aiding models of nutrient flux in the ocean.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computational and Systems Biology Program
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biological Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2016.161
