Coupled magnetic nanoparticle‐mediated isolation and single‐cell image recognition to detect Bacillus' cell size in soil

Abstract Microbial morphology fundamentally constrains how species interact with their environment, and hence ultimately affects their niche. However, the methodology of functional microbes in the soil ecosystem is still poorly studied since it is difficult to capture and identify the active monospecific community from the complicated environment and enormous number of microbial species in soils. To comprehensively reveal the morphology of active microbes in soil ecosystem, magnetic nanoparticle‐mediated isolation (MMI) and single‐cell image recognition (SCIR) were employed to study soil active Bacillus community, which functionally boosted the soil fertility in organic fertilisation compared to mineral fertilisation and unfertilised control treatments in our previous study. The results showed that MMI and SCIR can efficiently isolate active Bacillus from soil particles and other microorganisms. High throughput sequencing showed that the captured Bacillus showed similar community structure in different long‐term fertilisation soils, while SCIR revealed that the active Bacillus was greater in number and larger in size in organic fertilisation treatment compared to mineral fertilisation and unfertilised control treatments. Our study demonstrates that the combination of MMI and SCIR is a potentially powerful tool to capture and identify the morphology of active and functional microbes in the soil ecosystem.