Morphological and Biochemical characterization of the Plaque forming Bacteria Deinococcus sonorensis

 Overall the path to getting the poster for the conference was very rocky but the conference ended up going well and I felt confident when presenting. This poster discussed the various characteristics of D. sonorensis, mainly biochemical but also morphological. However a large part of the poster was looking at the differences in plaque structure when grown in different nutrients and looking into what the meant for the cell. There was also a small amount of genomic data and an example of our methods for the UV exposure. 


Final Introduction-
    
     Deinococcus sonorensis was isolated from ground soil of the Sonora Desert of Arizona in 2005. Like so many members of this genus, D. sonorensis is radioresistant, but notably presents with a sticky biofilm structure. This  biofilm has made culturing and accessing the cells more challenging and thus relatively little is known about the cell biology of the species or the nature of the biofilm. Our core objective in the current study is understanding the inter-relationship of nutrient density, plaque characteristics and UV resistance. Here we present foundational data toward that goal, examining the morphology and physiology of the species through standard microbiological biochemical tests, morphological assessments through light and fluorescence microscopy and a preliminary analysis of the genomic structure of the species. Motility, nutrient preference and UV resistance in two different media were also examined. Qualitative observations were also made on the nature and volume of the plaque under different conditions.


Final Summary of Findings-

D. sonoriensis is:

  • Aerobic, gram positive, rod-shaped

  • Amylase, Protease, Oxidase, Catalase, and Lactose positive.

  • Urease, Tryptophanase, Citrate, Mixed acid pathways, Sulfur reduction negative.

  • UV tolerant dependent on nutrient density

  • Plaque does not disperse in TGY broth, yet homogenizes in R2B media.

  • Genome size of 4,839,906 bp. GC content is 70.13%, with 4700 protein coding genes.

   
References- 

Krisko, A., & Radman, M. (2010, July 26). Protein damage and death by radiation in escherichia coli and Deinococcus radiodurans | proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. PNAS. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1009312107

Rainey, F. A., Ray, K., Ferreira, M., Gatz, B. Z., Nobre, M. F., Bagaley, D., Rash, B. A., Park, M. J., Earl, Whitman, W. B. (2015). Bergey’s Manual of Systematics of Archaea and bacteria (1st ed.). John Wiley & Sons,   Inc.




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