A cytometric framework to assess trends in the morphological structure of bacterioplankton communities along freshwater environmental gradients.

ABSTRACT: Bacterioplankton communities are characterized by varying distributions of cell size, shape and internal complexity, and macromolecular composition, yet there have been few attempts to quantitatively describe this complex community structure and to assess how it varies among communities and habitats. Here we present a framework to assess this morphological structure, based on the analysis of dot clouds resulting from flow cytometric measurements of side and forward scatter and cell fluorescence of individual bacterioplankton cells. Each community has a characteristic cytometric dot cloud, which forms an ellipsoid that can be described by a combination of metrics that quantify its shape, elongation, volume, orientation, and internal complexity. We apply this framework to assess how the bact

SUBMITTER: Soria-Piriz S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12694418 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature