Motility of Colwellia psychrerythraea strain 34H at subzero temperatures

• Main Authors: Karen Junge, Hajo Eicken, Jody W. Deming
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2003
• Subjects: Arctic; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.568.4794; http://www2.gi.alaska.edu/~eicken/he_publ/03JED.pdf

We examined the Arctic bacterium Colwellia psychrerythraea strain 34H for motility at temperatures from1 to 15°C by using transmitted-light microscopy in a temperature-controlled laboratory. The results, showing motility to 10°C, indicate much lower temperatures to be permissive of motility than previously reported (5°C), with implications for microbial activity in frozen environments. The earth is primarily a cold biosphere, with most of the world’s ocean waters at temperatures below 5°C. Liquid water and microbial life also persist at much colder temperatures within frozen environments such as lake (18) and sea ice (10). Yet, only very recently has any attention been paid to how the basic bacterial trait of motility may be expressed in the cold (this question was addressed theoretically by Price [17] and empirically by Allen and Deming, who showed motility to 1°C, along with chemically directed movement or chemotaxis [D. M. Allen and J. W. Deming, Abstr. 102nd Gen. Meet. Am. Soc. Microbiol., abstr. I-52, 2002]). The lowest temperature