Unravelling the importance of the eukaryotic and bacterial communities and their relationship with Legionella spp. ecolo
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RESEARCH
Open Access
Unravelling the importance of the eukaryotic and bacterial communities and their relationship with Legionella spp. ecology in cooling towers: a complex network Kiran Paranjape1, Émilie Bédard2, Deeksha Shetty1, Mengqi Hu1, Fiona Chan Pak Choon1, Michèle Prévost2 and Sébastien P. Faucher1*
Abstract Background: Cooling towers are a major source of large community-associated outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease, a severe pneumonia. This disease is contracted when inhaling aerosols that are contaminated with bacteria from the genus Legionella, most importantly Legionella pneumophila. How cooling towers support the growth of this bacterium is still not well understood. As Legionella species are intracellular parasites of protozoa, it is assumed that protozoan community in cooling towers play an important role in Legionella ecology and outbreaks. However, the exact mechanism of how the eukaryotic community contributes to Legionella ecology is still unclear. Therefore, we used 18S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing to characterize the eukaryotic communities of 18 different cooling towers. The data from the eukaryotic community was then analysed with the bacterial community of the same towers in order to understand how each community could affect Legionella spp. ecology in cooling towers. Results: We identified several microbial groups in the cooling tower ecosystem associated with Legionella spp. that suggest the presence of a microbial loop in these systems. Dissolved organic carbon was shown to be a major factor in shaping the eukaryotic community and may be an important factor for Legionella ecology. Network analysis, based on co-occurrence, revealed that Legionella was correlated with a number of different organisms. Out of these, the bacterial genus Brevundimonas and the ciliate class Oligohymenophorea were shown, through in vitro experiments, to stimulate the growth of L. pneumophila through direct and indirect mechanisms. (Continued on next page)
* Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Department of Natural Resource Sciences, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, McGill University, Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, QC, Canada Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a cop
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