[Colony structure of a consortium of nitrogen-fixing bacteria]
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Updated: Oct 7, 2026

Assembly and Quantification of Co-Cultures Combining Heterotrophic Yeast with Phototrophic Sugar-Secreting Cyanobacteria
Published on: December 27, 2024
A P Puzyr'1, O A Mogil'naia, Iu L Gurevich
1Institute of Biophysics, Siberian Division, Russian Academy of Sciences, Krasnoyarsk, 660036 Russia.
Abstract:
Colonies produced by a consortium of nitrifying bacteria were studied using light and electron microscopy. The colonies were obtained by direct plating of inoculum from a two-stage nonsterile chemostat fermentor and by repeatedly passing the microbial community of the fermentor through selective media containing ammonium or nitrite. The colonies studied can be characterized by a specific combination of six types of cells differing in their ultrastructure and spatial location within the colony. The types of cells occurring within a given colony were found to depend on the nitrogen compound present in the medium. As a result of our study, morphological features of colonial bacterial communities were preliminarily identified. The proposed approach can be viewed as a method to describe microbial associations and communities.
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