Culturing Uncultivatable Gut Microorganisms

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The majority of gut microbes remain uncultivatable, and this significant obstacle must be overcome to understand the role of the microbiome in human health. The goal of this project is to develop a high-throughput method to grow previously uncultivatable bacteria. Our previous work with uncultivatable microorganisms from the external environment has lead to a number of advances: (1) it is possible to cultivate a substantial number of otherwise uncultivatable bacteria by growing them in situ. When microorganisms are placed into a diffusion chamber which is then returned to their natural environment, a substantial proportion of otherwise uncultivatable microorganisms will grow; (2) reinoculation from chamber to chamber produces domesticated variants that can grow on synthetic media in vitro; (3) many uncultivatable species will grow on synthetic media in co-culture with a cultivable organism from the same environment; (4) we recently discovered the first growth promoting factors for uncultivatable bacteria. An assay-driven purification lead to the identification of siderophores as essential factors produced by helper organisms that trigger growth of uncultivatable bacteria from marine sediment. We find that growth co-culture can be used to obtain uncultivatable organisms from the gut flora. In this project, we will develop a high-throughput approach to co-culture in order to obtain a large collection of previously uncultivatable microorganisms from the gut microbiome. A panel of 24 cultivable gut species representing the main taxonomic groups will be arrayed in a microtiter plate and a platform carrying inserts with a 0.2 5m pore membrane will be placed in the wells. In this manner, each well will be separated into a bottom section inoculated with a given cultivable species and a top section connected with it through pores of the membrane. A suspension from a human fecal sample will then be separated by a cell sorter, and individual cells will be deposited in the upper chamber of each well. After incubation, material from both parts of a well will be collected and tested for growth of the two organisms separately and in co-culture. This will lead to the isolation of uncultivatable species and their helpers. 16S rRNA gene sequence determination will then identify these microorganisms. Whole genome sequencing will be performed for at least ten of the uncultivatable isolates from a variety of taxonomic groups. The genome sequencing will provide an ultimate validation of the proposed approach to obtain novel uncultivatable species from the microbiome. Growth factors will be isolated from the supernatant of corresponding helper organisms by bioassay-guided purification. Structures of the new compounds will be determined. The growth factors will then be examined, individually and in combination, for their ability to enable in vitro cultivation of uncultivatable microorganisms. The tools and approaches we develop are likely to lead to the cultivation of many gut bacteria, and will help us understand the role of the gut microbiome in health and disease. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The majority of gut bacteria are uncultivatable, and do not grow under laboratory conditions for unknown reasons. We find that many of these organisms depend on neighboring, cultivable species for growth. In this project, we will develop a method for large-scale isolation of previously uncultivatable microorganisms by pairing them with the correct helper species, which will enable their genome sequencing, and detailed study of their role in health and disease.