Abstract
Plant leaves constitute a huge microbial habitat of global importance. How microorganisms survive the dry daytime on leaves and avoid desiccation is not well understood. There is evidence that microscopic surface wetness in the form of thin films and micrometer-sized droplets, invisible to the naked eye, persists on leaves during daytime due to deliquescence - the absorption of water until dissolution - of hygroscopic aerosols. Here we study how such microscopic wetness affects cell survival. We show that, on surfaces drying under moderate humidity, stable microdroplets form around bacterial aggregates due to capillary pinning and deliquescence. Notably, droplet-size increases with aggregate-size, and cell survival is higher the larger the droplet. This phenomenon was observed for 13 bacterial species, two of which - Pseudomonas fluorescens and P. putida - were studied in depth. Microdroplet formation around aggregates is likely key to bacterial survival in a variety of unsaturated microbial habitats, including leaf surfaces.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
James S. McDonnell Foundation (#220020475)
- Nadav Kashtan
Israel Science Foundation (1396/19)
- Nadav Kashtan
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Wenying Shou, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, United States
Publication history
- Received: May 16, 2019
- Accepted: September 20, 2019
- Accepted Manuscript published: October 15, 2019 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: November 1, 2019 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2019, Grinberg et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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