Researchers in China developed a faster way to find low-abundance marine bacteria that pull CO2 from seawater. The workflow, called scRACS-Culture, uses isotope-labeled bicarbonate, Raman-activated flow cytometry, and single-cell sorting to spot active carbon-fixing microbes without waiting for them to grow into a visible culture. In tests on Yellow Sea water, the team identified and cultured six active strains in seven days, compared with 90 days or more for conventional methods. One isolate, Paraburkholderia aromaticivorans FR-4, both fixes CO2 through the Calvin cycle and degrades aromatic hydrocarbons like xylene. That dual metabolism could make it useful for studying coastal carbon cycling and for cleaning up oil-contaminated marine sites. The work appeared in Bioresource Technology and involved the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology and Qingdao University of Science and Technology.
