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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, November 2001, p. 4975-4983, Vol. 67, No. 11
0099-2240/01/$04.00+0   DOI: 10.1128/AEM.67.11.4975-4983.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.

Antagonistic Interactions among Marine Pelagic Bacteria

Richard A. Long* and Farooq Azam

Marine Biology Research Division, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093

Received 16 April 2001/Accepted 31 July 2001

Recent studies suggest that bacterial abundance and species diversity in the ocean's water column are variable at the millimeter scale, apparently in response to the small-scale heterogeneity in the distribution of organic matter. We hypothesized that bacterium-bacterium antagonistic interactions may contribute to variations in community structure at the microscale. We examined each of the 86 isolates for their inhibition of growth of the remaining 85 isolates by the Burkholder agar diffusion assay. More than one-half of the isolates expressed antagonistic activity, and this trait was more common with particle-associated bacteria than with free-living bacteria. This was exemplified by members of the alpha  subclass of the class Proteobacteria (alpha -proteobacteria), in which production of antagonistic molecules was dominated by attached bacteria. We found that gamma -proteobacteria (members of the orders Alteromonadales and Vibrionales) are the most prolific producers of inhibitory materials and also the most resilient to them, while members of the Bacteriodetes were the organisms that were least productive and most sensitive to antagonistic interactions. Widespread interspecies growth inhibition is consistent with the role of this phenomenon in structuring bacterial communities at the microscale. Furthermore, our results suggest that bacteria from pelagic marine particles may be an underutilized source of novel antibiotics.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Marine Biology Research Division, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093. Phone: (858) 534-3196. Fax: (858) 534-7313. E-mail: ralong{at}ucsd.edu.

Applied and Environmental Microbiology, November 2001, p. 4975-4983, Vol. 67, No. 11
0099-2240/01/$04.00+0   DOI: 10.1128/AEM.67.11.4975-4983.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.


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Copyright © 2001 by the American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.