Characterization of Aquatic Biofilms with Flow Cytometry

Summary

Flow cytometry in combination with visual clustering offers an easy-to-use and fast method for studying aquatic biofilms. It can be used for biofilm characterization, detection of changes in biofilm community structure, and detection of abiotic particles embedded in the biofilm.

Abstract

Biofilms are dynamic consortia of microorganism that play a key role in freshwater ecosystems. By changing their community structure, biofilms respond quickly to environmental changes and can be thus used as indicators of water quality. Currently, biofilm assessment is mostly based on integrative and functional endpoints, such as photosynthetic or respiratory activity, which do not provide information on the biofilm community structure. Flow cytometry and computational visualization offer an alternative, sensitive, and easy-to-use method for assessment of the community composition, particularly of the photoautotrophic part of freshwater biofilms. It requires only basic sample preparation, after which the entire sample is run through the flow cytometer. The single-cell optical and fluorescent information is used for computational visualization and biological interpretation. Its main advantages over other methods are the speed of analysis and the high-information-content nature. Flow cytometry provides information on several cellular and biofilm traits in a single measurement: particle size, density, pigment content, abiotic content in the biofilm, and coarse taxonomic information. However, it does not provide information on biofilm composition on the species level. We see high potential in the use of the method for environmental monitoring of aquatic ecosystems and as an initial biofilm evaluation step that informs downstream detailed investigations by complementary and more detailed methods.

Introduction

Biofilms are dynamic consortia of microorganism that play a key role in freshwater ecosystems, ranging from primary production, nutrient cycling, and water purification to influencing the distribution of microorganisms and their biodiversity in the ecosystem¹. When biofilms are exposed to changing environmental conditions or to stressors, such as chemicals, their community structure quickly shifts towards more tolerant species^2,3. Their high sensitivity turns biofilms into attractive model systems for environmental monitoring⁴, however none of the current methods....

Protocol

1. Ecosystem Selection and Biofilm Sampling

1. Select an aquatic ecosystem of interest and find sampling sites where biofilms grow. Shallow parts of a stream with slow to medium water flow and a stony streambed for biofilm attachment are appropriate^17,18.
2. Optional: If the site does not have enough surfaces for biofilm attachment, or to decrease the biofilms variability within a site, place artificial substrates for biofilm attachment (e.g. glass slides, ceramic tiles) into the site, while making sure that they are placed in the same direction with respect to the water flow and at si....

Results

Using the procedure presented here (Figure 1), samples taken from several sites of a local stream in Switzerland were analyzed. At each site, three similar sized stones (10–12 cm) were taken, and biofilms were brushed off the stones. The samples were then sonicated, fixed, filtered and later analyzed by flow cytometry. The setup of the flow cytometer and the reference database used were the same as described in a previous paper¹⁵: thre.......

Discussion

The protocol described above is relatively simple to implement. However, while the presented default settings have been shown to be suitable for all phototrophic biofilm tested thus far, optimization (as described in the protocol) is necessary to maximize the information obtained from the method. Indeed, the optical and fluorescent properties of biofilms can vary, depending on the environmental conditions (season, temperature, chemical composition of the water)¹. Therefore, it is important to take.......

Materials

List of materials used in this article

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
Multimeter	WTW	MultiLine 3620 IDS	For measuring temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen
Ultrasonic cleaner	VWR International	97043-986	Tank dimesions: 15*14*10 cm
Flow cytometer	Beckman Coulter	Gallios	Lasers: 405, 488 and 638 nm. Filters bands in Supplementary Table 11. Sgier et, Nat Comm, 2016.
Plate reader	Tecan	Infinite M200	used for selecting appropriate setting of the FC
Cell sorter	Beckman Coulter	MoFlo Astrios	Settings in Supplementary Table 12. Sgier et, Nat Comm, 2016.
Fluorescence microscope	Zeiss	Axiovert 135	Zeiss EC Plan-Neofluar 40x/0.75 objective
SOFTWARE
Matlab	MathWorks	R2013a	software for numerical computing
CYT	Dana Pe'er Lab	Version 1.1	free interactive visualization tool for analysis of cytometry data