Visualizing in situ translational activity for identifying and sorting slow-growing archaeal-bacterial consortia.

ABSTRACT: To understand the biogeochemical roles of microorganisms in the environment, it is important to determine when and under which conditions they are metabolically active. Bioorthogonal noncanonical amino acid tagging (BONCAT) can reveal active cells by tracking the incorporation of synthetic amino acids into newly synthesized proteins. The phylogenetic identity of translationally active cells can be determined by combining BONCAT with rRNA-targeted fluorescence in situ hybridization (BONCAT-FISH). In theory, BONCAT-labeled cells could be isolated with fluorescence-activated cell sorting (BONCAT-FACS) for subsequent genetic analyses. Here, in the first application, to our knowledge, of BONCAT-FISH and BONCAT-FACS within an environmental context, we probe the translational activity of microbia

SUBMITTER: Hatzenpichler R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4948357 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature