Abstract
The present study artificially enhanced wild colonial Microcystis buoyancy by controlling light regime and colonial morphology with various contents of Ca2+ and tightly-bound extracellular polysaccharides (TB-EPS) extracted from cyanobacterial blooms in medium. A series of laboratory culture experiments indicated that Microcystis exhibited higher buoyancy (Relative buoyancy of 25% [RB25]: 59 ± 12%) when precultured without light irradiance for 24 hours compared with continuous lighting condition (RB25: 49 ± 7.8%). Depletion of cellular carbohydrate would be the major cause. The preculture with the addition of Ca2+ (250 mg/L) into medium in dark condition promoted colony formation and colony size expansion, which enhanced the buoyancy of Microcystis (RB25: 88 ± 7.4%), although the addition of TB-EPS (200 mg/L) together with Ca2+ caused less efficiency of the buoyancy (RB25: 55 ± 5.6%). Microcystis was originally wrapped with a large amount of TB-EPS, and negatively charged carboxy groups were considered to be present on the TB-EPS surface. Carboxy groups between the added TB-EPS and the TB-EPS wrapping Microcystis would be repulsed each other, which caused the undevelopment of colonies as well as decline of buoyancy. Furthermore, flotation velocity experiments have confirmed that the preculture of Microcystis at Ca2+ = 500 mg/L, in particular, had a significant acceleration of the flotation velocity (2.0 × 10–1 cm/s), and consequently promoting colony size expansion. From these results, the present study suggests that controlling light and Ca2+ concentration in solution could enhance the buoyant efficiency of Microcystis, which might become a promising method for the removal of cyanobacterial blooms.
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Acknowledgements
The present study was supported in part by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (KAKENHI Grant No. JP21K04311). We are deeply thankful to Prof. Dr. Reiko Uruma, the head of Safety and Health Organization, Chiba University, for her encouragement on our study.
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No competing financial interests exist. Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, JP21K04311, Yoshimasa Amano
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Masumoto, A., Amano, Y. & Machida, M. Enhancement of cyanobacterial blooms buoyancy by controlling extracellular polysaccharides content and cation concentration under light-limited condition. Int. J. Environ. Sci. Technol. 21, 1245–1254 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-023-05014-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-023-05014-4