Functionality of Dilute-Environment Bacteria

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The objective of this effort is to understand properties of oligobacteria that allow growth in extremely dilute solutions in order to facilitate examination for extraterrestrial life. While dominant in terms of biomass in aquatic systems, typical forms are rarely if ever cultivated. New techniques such as growth from single cells give improved examples of typical forms and the strategy outlined is to generate cultures that may taken as examples for detailed examination. Procedures are designed to optimize culturability by observing numerous cultures inoculated with statistically abundant single cells. The populations appearing are visualized by flow cytometry and the number of species are assayed by molecular techniques using novel statistical formulations to assess viability. Sensitivity to the initiation of growth is examined by culture media amendments. Nutrient responses are examined within the framework of novel Janusian kinetics that relate organism construction to nutrient sequestering ability. Key questions involve artifactual contamination and substrate accelerated death. Fresh water will therefore be used to eliminate some salt-associated problems during media preparation. Temperature and species-species interactions will be evaluated as well. The cultures will be characterized physiologically and genetically. One objective is to obtain a representative culture for gene sequencing as an aid to a detailed understanding of the functionality of oligobacteria.