Department of Civil Engineering, Netaji Subhas University of Technology, West Campus, Delhi, India.
School of Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineering, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA.
Arch Microbiol. 2022 Nov 15;204(12):707. doi: 10.1007/s00203-022-03327-5.
Microbial adhesion and transport are significantly influenced by their hydrophobicity. Various domains, such as biofouling, bioremediation, wastewater treatment, oil recovery, pathogenesis, implant infections, and several other microbial disciplines, make use of hydrophobicity assessment. One easy assay for assessing the microbial surface hydrophobicity is the microbial adhesion to hydrocarbons (MATH) test which works on the differential partitioning of microbes at a hydrocarbon-aqueous interface. Unfortunately, a standard protocol for this test is still unavailable, even though it has been widely studied and it is known that the results are sensitive to the operating parameters used. This study has been envisaged to investigate the effects of variations in the MATH test parameters on the hydrophobicity results. For this purpose, six different test parameters (vortex duration, phase separation period, hydrocarbon-aqueous phase volume ratio, hydrocarbon selection, absorbance wavelength, and suspension medium) were varied. Four different Gram-negative bacteria were used for experimentation. It was observed that except for phase separation period, all other test parameters significantly influenced the hydrophobicity results. Furthermore, the hydrocarbon saturation of the suspension medium was a critical factor for growth medium suspensions. This study is expected to guide researchers in selecting the appropriate values of test parameters for MATH tests and enhance our understanding of this technique and pave the way for developing a standardized protocol.
微生物的附着和传输会受到其疏水性的显著影响。生物污损、生物修复、废水处理、采油、发病机制、植入物感染以及其他一些微生物学科都利用疏水性评估。评估微生物表面疏水性的一种简单方法是微生物对烃类的附着（MATH）测试，它基于微生物在烃-水界面上的差异分配。不幸的是，尽管该测试已经得到了广泛的研究，并且已经知道结果对所用的操作参数很敏感，但仍然没有该测试的标准协议。本研究旨在研究 MATH 测试参数的变化对疏水性结果的影响。为此，改变了六个不同的测试参数（涡旋持续时间、相分离时间、烃-水相体积比、烃类选择、吸光度波长和悬浮介质）。使用了四种不同的革兰氏阴性菌进行实验。结果表明，除了相分离时间外，所有其他测试参数都显著影响疏水性结果。此外，悬浮介质的烃饱和度是生长介质悬浮液的一个关键因素。本研究有望指导研究人员选择 MATH 测试的适当测试参数值，并增强我们对该技术的理解，为制定标准化协议铺平道路。
