PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Olga Lamprecht
AU  - Bettina Wagner
AU  - Nicolas Derlon
AU  - Ahmed Tlili
TI  - Synthetic periphyton as a model system to understand species dynamics in complex microbial freshwater communities
AID  - 10.1101/2021.10.31.466637
DP  - 2022 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2021.10.31.466637
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/04/30/2021.10.31.466637.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/04/30/2021.10.31.466637.full
AB  - Phototrophic biofilms, also known as periphyton, are microbial freshwater communities that drive crucial ecological processes in streams and lakes. Gaining a deep mechanistic understanding of the biological processes occurring in natural periphyton remains challenging due to the high complexity and variability of such communities. To address this challenge, we rationally developed a workflow to construct a synthetic community by co-culturing 26 phototrophic species (i.e., diatoms, green algae and cyanobacteria) that were inoculated in a successional sequence to create a periphytic biofilm on glass slides. We show that this community is diverse, stable and highly reproducible in terms of microbial composition, function and 3D spatial structure of the biofilm. We also demonstrate the ability to monitor microbial dynamics at the single species level during periphyton development and how their abundances are impacted by stressors such as increased temperature and a herbicide, singly and in combination. Overall, such a synthetic periphyton, grown under controlled conditions, can be used as a model system for theory testing through targeted manipulation.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.