A1 Journal article (refereed)
Application of high resolution melting assay (HRM) to study temperature-dependent intraspecific competition in a pathogenic bacterium (2017)

Ashrafi, R., Bruneaux, M., Sundberg, L.-R., Pulkkinen, K., & Ketola, T. (2017). Application of high resolution melting assay (HRM) to study temperature-dependent intraspecific competition in a pathogenic bacterium. Scientific Reports, 7, Article 980. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-01074-y

JYU authors or editors

Publication details

All authors or editors: Ashrafi, Roghaieh; Bruneaux, Matthieu; Sundberg, Lotta-Riina; Pulkkinen, Katja; Ketola, Tarmo

Journal or series: Scientific Reports

ISSN: 2045-2322

eISSN: 2045-2322

Publication year: 2017

Volume: 7

Issue number: 0

Article number: 980

Publisher: Nature Publishing Group

Publication country: United Kingdom

Publication language: English

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-01074-y

Research data link: https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/handle/123456789/53541

Publication open access: Openly available

Publication channel open access: Open Access channel

Publication is parallel published (JYX): https://jyx.jyu.fi/handle/123456789/53693

Abstract

Studies on species’ responses to climate change have focused largely on the direct effect of abiotic factors and in particular temperature, neglecting the effects of biotic interactions in determining the outcome of climate change projections. Many microbes rely on strong interference competition; hence the fitness of many pathogenic bacteria could be a function of both their growth properties and intraspecific competition. However, due to technical challenges in distinguishing and tracking individual strains, experimental evidence on intraspecific competition has been limited so far. Here, we developed a robust application of the high-resolution melting (HRM) assay to study head-to-head competition between mixed genotype co-cultures of a waterborne bacterial pathogen of fish, Flavobacterium columnare, at two different temperatures. We found that competition outcome in liquid cultures seemed to be well predicted by growth yield of isolated strains, but was mostly inconsistent with interference competition results measured in inhibition tests on solid agar, especially as no growth inhibition between strain pairs was detected at the higher temperature. These results suggest that, for a given temperature, the factors driving competition outcome differ between liquid and solid environments.

Keywords: temperature

Free keywords: pathogenic bacteria; intraspecific competition; high-resolution melting (HRM) assay

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Ministry reporting: Yes

Reporting Year: 2017

JUFO rating: 2