Exploring the diversity of Acinetobacter populations in river water with genus-specific primers and probes

This study aimed to explore the diversity of river water Acinetobacter populations using culture-dependent and -independent methods. Pyrosequencing indicated that 1.5% of the total sequences from Qiandeng River water were classified as Acinetobacter. Twelve Acinetobacter strains were isolated from three different sampling sites of the Qiandeng River. Based on culture-dependent methods, A. johnsonii, A. lwoffii and A. guillouiae were the most abundantly represented Acinetobacter strains among the upper, middle and downstream populations of the river. Probing of three Acinetobacter-enriched 16S rRNA gene libraries with the Acinetobacter specific probe Act660F revealed 42 unique 16S rRNA gene sequences exhibiting a similarity of 94.9-99.9% with the known Acinetobacter strains. Among the uncultured Acinetobacter sequences, 50%, 58.3% and 68.8% of those obtained from upstream sampling site A, middle stream sampling site B and downstream sampling site C were phylogenetically located within Group I. This Group represented the most abundant strains of Acinetobacter populations in river water based on culture-independent methods. The results indicated that culture-independent methods provide more detailed information on the diversity of Acinetobacter populations than that based on culture-dependent methods. Therefore, the development of new and efficient isolation methods to identify uncultured Acinetobacter species is required.