Successful Isolation of Diverse Verrucomicrobiota Strains through the Duckweed-Microbes Co-cultivation Method.

The "duckweed-microbes co-cultivation method" is a microbial isolation technique that effectively recovers diverse microbes, including rarely cultivated bacterial phyla, from environmental samples. In this method, aseptic duckweed and microbes collected from an environmental sample are co-cultivated for several days, and duckweed-associated microbes are then isolated from its roots using a conventional agar plate-based cultivation method. We herein propose several improvements to the method in order to specifically obtain members of the rarely cultivated bacterial phylum, Verrucomicrobiota.

"Duckweed-Microbe Co-Cultivation Method" for Isolating a Wide Variety of Microbes Including Taxonomically Novel Microbes.

We herein described a new microbial isolation method using the interaction between the floating aquatic plant, duckweed, and microbes. We harvested microbial cells from Japanese loosestrife roots and co-cultivated these cells with aseptic duckweed using artificial inorganic medium for the plant for four weeks. During the co-cultivation, some duckweeds were collected every week, and the roots were used for microbial isolation using a low-nutrient plate medium.