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Cheese Rind In Situ-In Vitro Model Community

Community ID CommunityMech:000153
Ecological State ENGINEERED
Environment laboratory reconstructed cheese rind biofilm
ENVO:01001405

A tractable fermented-food surface biofilm system based on cheese rind microbial communities. Wolfe and colleagues surveyed 137 rind communities across 10 countries, isolated representatives of the dominant bacterial and fungal genera, and reconstructed simplified cheese-curd-agar communities in vitro to test how moisture, washing, pH, and bacterial-fungal interactions shape reproducible community assembly and succession.

Taxonomy

Taxon Ontology ID Functional Roles Abundance
Staphylococcus NCBITaxon:1279 DOMINANT
Brevibacterium NCBITaxon:1696 ABUNDANT
  • doi:10.1016/j.cell.2014.05.041 - SUPPORT (IN_VITRO)
    "taxa Brevibacterium and Brachybacterium and fungal taxa Penicillium and Scopulariopsis emerged"
Debaryomyces NCBITaxon:4958 ABUNDANT
  • PMID:25036636 - SUPPORT (IN_VITRO)
    "dry environment of the natural rind treatment enriching for the yeast Debaryomyces"
Penicillium NCBITaxon:5073 ABUNDANT

Ecological Interactions

Ecological interaction network for Cheese Rind In Situ-In Vitro Model Community Bipartite graph where circle nodes represent taxa and colored rectangles represent ecological interactions (cross-feeding, mutualism, syntrophy, competition, commensalism).
Taxon
Cross-feeding
Mutualism
Syntrophy
Competition
Commensalism
Niche partitioning
Colonization facilitation
Strain competition
Predation

Moisture-Structured Rind Community Assembly

NICHE_PARTITIONING

Biological Processes:

Evidence

Fungal Deacidification Facilitates Bacterial Growth

COLONIZATION_FACILITATION

Biological Processes:

  • biological process involved in interspecies interaction between organisms (GO:0044419)

Evidence

  • PMID:25036636 - SUPPORT (IN_VITRO)
    "yeasts and filamentous fungi deacidify the cheese curd medium"
  • PMID:25036636 - SUPPORT (IN_VITRO)
    "positive growth responses of many bacteria to the presence of a fungus"

Reproducible Natural-Rind Succession

COLONIZATION_FACILITATION

Biological Processes:

Evidence

Associated Datasets

Dataset Type Repository Accession
Cheese rind amplicon and metagenomic survey
Primary study reporting 16S rDNA, ITS, metagenomic, culturing, and in vitro reconstruction data for cheese rind microbial communities. 		AMPLICON_16S OTHER PMID:25036636

Environmental Factors

Factor Value Unit
rind moisture natural-rind treatment drier than undried plates N/A
  • PMID:25036636 - SUPPORT (IN_VITRO)
    "62% final moisture of the medium compared to 83% in plates that were not dried"
cheese curd medium pH initial low pH near 5, with fungal deacidification N/A
  • PMID:25036636 - SUPPORT (IN_VITRO)
    "fresh cheeses have a relatively low pH before rind development occurs"

Growth Media

cheese curd agar

Temperature 12 C

Preparation notes: Simplified rind communities were inoculated onto cheese curd agar and subjected to bloomy, washed, natural, or unmanipulated control treatments.

Evidence

doi:10.1016/j.cell.2014.05.041

"After a four-week incubation at 12°C"

PMID:25036636

"onto cheese curd agar"