Non-biodegradable objects may boost microbial growth in water bodies by harnessing bubbles.

ABSTRACT: Given the ubiquity of bubbles and non-biodegradable wastes in aqueous environments, their transport through bubbles should be widely extant in water bodies. In this study, we investigate the effect of bubble-induced waste transport on microbial growth by using yeasts as model microbes and a silicone rubber object as model waste. Noteworthily, this object repeatedly rises and sinks in fluid through fluctuations in bubble-acquired buoyant forces produced by cyclic nucleation, growth and release of bubbles from object's surface. The rise-sink movement of the object gives rise to a strong bulk mixing and an enhanced resuspension of cells from the floor. Such spatially dynamic contaminant inside a nutrient-rich medium also leads to an increment in the total microbe concentration in the fluid. T

SUBMITTER: Srivastava A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8441119 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature