Extracellular Polymeric Substances (EPS) analysis was undertaken on three biofilms grown under different feeding conditions and offering diverging microbial activities and structural characteristics.
The EPS has many functions, such as promoting the microbial adhesion and structural stability of the biofilm (Flemming et al. 2007; Stoodley et al. 2002), and enhancing biofilm resistance to antimicrobial agents.
Despite underlying pathway engineering initiatives, however, microbial carotenoid biosynthetic and structural diversity and distribution have been significantly underestimated due to utilization of methods lacking either taxonomic breadth or structural resolution [28].
First, the overall phylogenetic structure of carotenoid biosynthesis is determined by considering the phylogenetic distribution of microbial carotenoid structural diversity and how it relates to phylogenies of core carotenoid biosynthetic proteins.
Recently, RNA based meta-transcriptomic studies [21] [23], which profile both protein-coding transcripts and ribosomal RNA (rRNA), have been used to study both functional and structural features of environmental microbial communities.
This approach provided valuable insight into the transitions and structural rearrangements occurring in the microbial communities under different fermentation conditions.
Through the action of various microbial structural components, microbial gene products and/or metabolites, this microbiota plays essential roles in intestinal homeostasis, regulating host immunity, gut barrier function and metabolic activity (Clemente et al., 2012).
However, we found no significant relationships between genetic diversity and structural complexity either for eubacterial or ammonia-oxidiser microbial groups.
To understand temperature related traits, we compiled sequences of predicted protein coding genes and structural RNAs from seven hyperthermophilic and seven mesophilic microbial organisms from GenBank [ 53].
The capability to image single microbial cell surfaces at nanometer scale under native conditions would profoundly impact mechanistic and structural studies of pathogenesis, immunobiology, environmental resistance, and biotransformation.
