RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Deconvolution model for cytometric microbial subgroups along a freshwater hydrologic continuum JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 063164 DO 10.1101/063164 A1 Stefano Amalfitano A1 Stefano Fazi A1 Anna M. Romani A1 Butturini Andrea YR 2016 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/07/11/063164.abstract AB Flow cytometry is suitable to discriminate and quantify aquatic microbial cells within a spectrum of fluorescence and light scatter signals. Using fixed operational and gating settings, a mixture model, coupled to Laplacian operator and Nelder-Mead optimization algorithm, allowed deconvolving bivariate cytometric profiles into single cell subgroups. This procedure was applied to outline recurrent patterns and quantitative changes of the aquatic microbial community along a river hydrologic continuum. We found five major persistent subgroups within each of the commonly retrieved populations of cells with Low and High content of Nucleic Acids (namely, LNA and HNA cells). Moreover, we assessed changes of the cytometric community profile over-imposed by water inputs from a wastewater treatment plant. Our approach for multiparametric data deconvolution confirmed that flow cytometry could represent a prime candidate technology for assessing microbial community patterns in flowing waters.