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Diversity of Microcystis aeruginosa isolates (Chroococcales, Cyanobacteria) from East-African water bodies

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Abstract

With exception of South Africa, very little is known about the presence and abundance of toxic cyanobacteria and cyanobacterial blooms on the African continent. The close proximity between society and nature, and the use of the sparse water resources as drinking water in large parts of Africa, lead to the recognition that more knowledge on toxic cyanobacterial blooms is of major importance. The bloom forming cyanobacterium Microcystis aeruginosa is known to produce cyclic heptatoxins (microcystins) which can be toxic to humans. In this study the morphological, genetic, and chemical characters of 24 strains of M. aeruginosa from several water bodies in Kenya and Uganda, some of them used as drinking water sources, were examined. The M. aeruginosa strains possessed different levels of diversity depending on characterisation method. Four morphotypes were identified based on the traditional morphological approach, 10 genotypes by DNA sequence comparison of the PC-IGS and ITS1 rDNA regions, and 10 chemotypes based on MALDI-TOF-MS oligopeptide analysis. Only 4 of the 24 isolated strains from East Africa were found to produce microcystins, while oligopeptides belonging to the aeruginosin and cyanopeptolin class were detected in most strains.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Randi Skulberg, Hege Hansen, and Monika Degebrodt for excellent laboratory assistance and Kjetil Røberg for helpful assistance with phylogenetic analysis. We are grateful to Marcel Erhard (AnagnosTec, Luckenwalde) and Martin Welker (Technical University, Berlin) for use of databases and for providing reference PSD spectra. We would like to thank the Kenyan Ministry of Education Science and Technology for providing research permission (No. MOEST 13/001/31 C90) and the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology for providing research permit (No. UNCST-EC584). This study was funded by the Norwegian Research Council (No. 148839/730). We thank the two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Norwegian Institute for Water Research, Gaustadalléen 21, 0349, Oslo, Norway

    Sigrid Haande, Thomas Rohrlack & Bente Edvardsen

  2. Department of Biology, University of Bergen, Box 7800, 5020, Bergen, Norway

    Sigrid Haande

  3. Department of Limnology of Stratified Lakes, Leibniz-Institute for Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Alte Fischerhütte 2, 16775, Stechlin-Neuglobsow, Germany

    Andreas Ballot & Claudia Wiedner

  4. Federal Environmental Agency, Corrensplatz 1, 14195, Berlin, Germany

    Jutta Fastner

  5. Department of Biology, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1066, Oslo, 0316, Oslo, Norway

    Bente Edvardsen

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  1. Sigrid Haande
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Correspondence to Sigrid Haande.

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Haande, S., Ballot, A., Rohrlack, T. et al. Diversity of Microcystis aeruginosa isolates (Chroococcales, Cyanobacteria) from East-African water bodies. Arch Microbiol 188, 15–25 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-007-0219-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-007-0219-8

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