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Phylogenetic Inference of Colony Isolates Comprising Seasonal Microcystis Blooms in Lake Taihu, China

  • Microbiology of Aquatic Systems
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Abstract

Blooms of the toxin-producing cyanobacterium, Microcystis spp., are an increasingly prevalent water quality problem and health hazard worldwide. China’s third largest lake, Lake Taihu, has been experiencing progressively more severe Microcystis blooms over the past three decades. In 2009 and 2010, individual Microcystis colonies, consisting of four different morphospecies, were isolated and genotyped using a whole-cell multiplex PCR assay. The 16S–23S rDNA-ITS sequences were aligned based on Bayesian inference and indicated that one morphospecies was genetically unique (Microcystis wesenbergii) and three were indistinguishable (Microcystis aeruginosa, Microcystis flos-aquae, and Microcystis ichthyoblabe). Microcystin (mcyB) genes were detected intermittently in two of the morphospecies while the other two morphospecies lacked the mcyB gene in all samples. Water temperature was found to influence bloom formation and morphotype prevalence, and chlorophyll a and temperature were positively and significantly correlated with microcystin concentration. Cooler water temperatures promoted toxigenic strains of Microcystis. Wind appeared to influence the distribution of morphotypes across the lake, with M. aeruginosa and M. ichthyoblabe being more susceptible to wind stress than M. wesenbergii and M. flos-aquae. The results of this study indicated that the blooms were composed of a variety of Microcystis morphospecies, with more genotypes observed than can be attributed to individual morphotypes. We conclude that morphology is not a reliable indicator of toxigenicity in Lake Taihu, and caution should be exercised when the M. aeruginosa morphotype is present because it is capable of producing MC-LR, the most toxic microcystin isoform.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Drs. B. Qin, X. Hai, and G. Zhu (Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGLAS)) for their hospitality and assistance and the staff at the Taihu Lake Laboratory Ecosystem Research Station (TLLER) for their assistance with sample collection and K. Rossignol for HPLC analyses. This research was supported by National Science Foundation grants to Drs. Hans Paerl and Steven Wilhelm ENG/CBET-0826819, OCE-0825466 and by NSF East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute fellowship OISE-0913942.

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  1. Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Institute of Marine Sciences, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 3431 Arendell St., Morehead City, NC, 28557, USA

    Timothy G. Otten & Hans W. Paerl

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  1. Timothy G. Otten
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Correspondence to Timothy G. Otten.

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Supplemental Figure 1

Multiple pairwise alignments of consensus mcyB amino acid translations from Lake Taihu M. aeruginosa and M. flos-aquae morphospecies. Asterisk indicates adenylation domain binding pocket residues (JPEG 230 kb)

Supplemental Figure 2

Genetic variability of Microcystis species based on c-phycocyanin A (cpcA) gene amino acid pairwise alignments. Consensus (contig) Microcystis sequences were created from all available sequences in GenBank (n = 153) using a minimum overlap of 20 base pairs and at least 99% sequence identity (JPEG 186 kb)

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Otten, T.G., Paerl, H.W. Phylogenetic Inference of Colony Isolates Comprising Seasonal Microcystis Blooms in Lake Taihu, China. Microb Ecol 62, 907–918 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-011-9884-x

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