Assessment of soil features on the growth of environmental nontuberculous mycobacterial isolates from Hawai'i.

Assessment of soil features on the growth of environmental nontuberculous mycobacterial isolates from Hawai'i. Appl Environ Microbiol. 2020 Aug 28;: Authors: Glickman CM, Virdi R, Hasan NA, Epperson LE, Brown L, Dawrs SN, Crooks JL, Chan ED, Strong M, Nelson ST, Honda JR Abstract Environmental nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) with the potential to cause opportunistic lung infections can reside in soil. This might be particularly relevant in Hawai'i, a geographic hot spot for NTM infections and whose soil composition differs from many other areas of the world. Soil components are likely to contribute to NTM prevalence in certain niches, as food sources or attachment scaffolds, but the particular types of soils, clays, and minerals that impact NTM growth are not well-defined. Hawai'i soil and chemically weathered rock (a.k.a., saprolite) samples were examined to characterize the microbiome and quantify 11 mineralogical features as well as soil pH. Machine learning methods were applied to identify important soil features influencing the presence of NTM. Next, these features were directly tested in vitro by incubating synthetic clays and minerals in the presence of Mycobacteroides abscessus and Mycobacterium chimaera isolates recovered from the Hawai'i environment and changes in bacterial growth were determined. Of the components examined, synthetic gibbsite, a mineral form of aluminum hydroxide, inhibited the growth of both M. abscessu...
Source: Applied and Environmental Microbiology - Category: Microbiology Authors: Tags: Appl Environ Microbiol Source Type: research