摘要
Diatoms play a decisive role in global primary production, have a key role in the marine food web, and serve as food for the industrial culture of aquatic animals. In addition, species of diatoms have been chosen as tools for measuring sea water quality and for bioassay procedures. Among them, Phaeodactylum tricornutum (Bohlin) Lewin, 1958, represents a good biological model due to its ease of handling and also to its physiological, genetic and growth characteristics. We investigated the use of the Epifluorescence Microscopy (EPM) to visualize and enumerate P. tricornutum cells and bacteria in cultures containing both kinds of microorganisms. The cell suspension was filtered, stained with SYBR Green and analyzed by EPM. P. tricornutum can be enumerated using EPM with comparable accuracy as using a hemocytometer. The same kind of growth curve is obtained with either method. EPM is an advantageous alternative to the classic light microscope counting method; it allows the simultaneous enumeration of P. tricornutum and bacteria in a single sample, measuring red autofluorescence and green fluorescence respectively. Moreover, the methodology is suitable for dynamic studies performed to determine the growth dependence between P. tricornutum and bacteria. Another advantage of this technique is that different shapes, sizes and physiological stages of the microbiological communities can be observed Las diatomeas tienen un rol decisivo en la producci車n primaria global, un rol clave en la red tr車fica marina y sirven como alimento en el cultivo industrial de animales acu芍ticos. Algunas especies han sido elegidas para medir la calidad del agua y para bioensayos. Entre ellas, Phaeodactylum tricornutum (Bohlin) Lewin, 1958, representa un buen modelo biol車gico debido a su f芍cil manejo, como tambi谷n a sus caracter赤sticas fisiol車gicas, gen谷ticas y de crecimiento. Se analiza el uso de la Microscop赤a de Epifluorescencia (MEP) para visualizar y enumerar c谷lulas de P. tricornutum y bacterias en cultivos que contienen ambos tipos de microorganismos. Las c谷lulas en suspensi車n fueron filtradas, marcadas con SYBR Green y analizadas con MEP. Las c谷lulas de P. tricornutum se pueden contar con una precisi車n comparable a la del hemocit車metro y se obtiene la misma curva de crecimiento con ambos m谷todos. La MEP es una alternativa ventajosa al uso del cl芍sico microscopio de luz, ya que permite el recuento simult芍neo de P. tricornutum y bacterias en una misma muestra, midi谷ndose la autofluorescencia roja y la fluorescencia verde, respectivamente. M芍s a迆n, la metodolog赤a es apropiada para