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High Life Expectancy of Bacteria on Lichens

Self-sustaining lichen symbioses potentially can become very old, sometimes even thousands of years in nature. In the joint structures, algal partners are sheltered between fungal structures that are externally colonized by bacterial communities. With this arrangement lichens survive long periods of...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Cernava, Tomislav, Berg, Gabriele, Grube, Martin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5023722/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27464604
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00248-016-0818-5
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author Cernava, Tomislav
Berg, Gabriele
Grube, Martin
author_facet Cernava, Tomislav
Berg, Gabriele
Grube, Martin
author_sort Cernava, Tomislav
collection PubMed
description Self-sustaining lichen symbioses potentially can become very old, sometimes even thousands of years in nature. In the joint structures, algal partners are sheltered between fungal structures that are externally colonized by bacterial communities. With this arrangement lichens survive long periods of drought, and lichen thalli can be revitalized even after decades of dry storage in a herbarium. To study the effects of long-term ex situ storage on viability of indigenous bacterial communities we comparatively studied herbarium-stored material of the lung lichen, Lobaria pulmonaria. We discovered that a significant fraction of the lichen-associated bacterial community survives herbarium storage of nearly 80 years, and living bacteria can still be found in even older material. As the bacteria reside in the upper surface layers of the lichen material, we argue that the extracellular polysaccharides of lichens contribute to superior life expectancy of bacteria. Deeper understanding of underlying mechanisms could provide novel possibilities for biotechnological applications.
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spelling pubmed-50237222016-09-27 High Life Expectancy of Bacteria on Lichens Cernava, Tomislav Berg, Gabriele Grube, Martin Microb Ecol Notes and Short Communications Self-sustaining lichen symbioses potentially can become very old, sometimes even thousands of years in nature. In the joint structures, algal partners are sheltered between fungal structures that are externally colonized by bacterial communities. With this arrangement lichens survive long periods of drought, and lichen thalli can be revitalized even after decades of dry storage in a herbarium. To study the effects of long-term ex situ storage on viability of indigenous bacterial communities we comparatively studied herbarium-stored material of the lung lichen, Lobaria pulmonaria. We discovered that a significant fraction of the lichen-associated bacterial community survives herbarium storage of nearly 80 years, and living bacteria can still be found in even older material. As the bacteria reside in the upper surface layers of the lichen material, we argue that the extracellular polysaccharides of lichens contribute to superior life expectancy of bacteria. Deeper understanding of underlying mechanisms could provide novel possibilities for biotechnological applications. Springer US 2016-07-27 2016 /pmc/articles/PMC5023722/ /pubmed/27464604 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00248-016-0818-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2016 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Notes and Short Communications
Cernava, Tomislav
Berg, Gabriele
Grube, Martin
High Life Expectancy of Bacteria on Lichens
title High Life Expectancy of Bacteria on Lichens
title_full High Life Expectancy of Bacteria on Lichens
title_fullStr High Life Expectancy of Bacteria on Lichens
title_full_unstemmed High Life Expectancy of Bacteria on Lichens
title_short High Life Expectancy of Bacteria on Lichens
title_sort high life expectancy of bacteria on lichens
topic Notes and Short Communications
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5023722/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27464604
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00248-016-0818-5
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