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.

Comparative Analysis of Microbial Communities in Fronds and Roots of Three Duckweed Species: Spirodela polyrhiza, Lemna minor, and Lemna aequinoctialis.

The microbial communities inhabiting the fronds of duckweeds have not been investigated in as much detail as those on the roots. We herein examined the microbial communities in three duckweed species using 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing and compared them to those on the roots. The microbial compositions of the fronds were distinct from those of the roots in the three species.