{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,18]],"date-time":"2026-01-18T10:40:18Z","timestamp":1768732818416,"version":"3.49.0"},"reference-count":45,"publisher":"Frontiers Media SA","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2023,6,30]],"date-time":"2023-06-30T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1688083200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["frontiersin.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Front. Microbiol."],"abstract":"<jats:p>The soil bacterium <jats:italic>Burkholderia pseudomallei<\/jats:italic> causes melioidosis, a potentially fatal and greatly underdiagnosed tropical disease. Detection of <jats:italic>B. pseudomallei<\/jats:italic> in the environment is important to trace the source of infections, define risk areas for melioidosis and increase the clinical awareness. Although <jats:italic>B. pseudomallei<\/jats:italic> polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based environmental detection provides important information, the culture of the pathogen remains essential but is still a methodological challenge. <jats:italic>B. pseudomallei<\/jats:italic> can catabolize erythritol, a metabolic pathway, which is otherwise rarely encountered among bacteria. We recently demonstrated that replacing threonine with erythritol as a single carbon source in the pH-neutral threonine-basal salt solution (TBSS-C50) historically used improved the isolation of <jats:italic>B. pseudomallei<\/jats:italic> from rice paddy soils. However, further culture medium parameters for an optimized recovery of <jats:italic>B. pseudomallei<\/jats:italic> strains from soils are still ill-defined. We, therefore, aimed to design a new erythritol-based medium by systematically optimizing parameters such as pH, buffer capacity, salt and nutrient composition. A key finding of our study is the enhanced erythritol-based growth of <jats:italic>B. pseudomallei<\/jats:italic> under acidic medium conditions. Our experiments with <jats:italic>B. pseudomallei<\/jats:italic> strains from different geographical origin led to the development of a phosphate-buffered acidic erythritol (ACER) medium with a pH of 6.3, higher erythritol concentration of 1.2%, supplemented vitamins and nitrate. This highly selective medium composition shortened the lag phase of <jats:italic>B. pseudomallei<\/jats:italic> cultures and greatly increased growth densities compared to TBSS-C50 and TBSS-C50-based erythritol medium. The ACER medium led to the highest enrichments of <jats:italic>B. pseudomallei<\/jats:italic> as determined from culture supernatants by quantitative PCR in a comparative validation with soil samples from the central part of Vietnam. Consequently, the median recovery of <jats:italic>B. pseudomallei<\/jats:italic> colony forming units on Ashdown\u2019s agar from ACER subcultures was 5.4 times higher compared to TBSS-C50-based erythritol medium (<jats:italic>p<\/jats:italic>\u2009=\u20090.005) and 30.7 times higher than TBSS-C50 (<jats:italic>p<\/jats:italic>\u2009&amp;lt;\u20090.001). In conclusion, our newly developed ACER medium significantly improves the isolation of viable <jats:italic>B. pseudomallei<\/jats:italic> from soils and, thereby, has the potential to reduce the rate of false-negative environmental cultures in melioidosis risk areas.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3389\/fmicb.2023.1213818","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2023,6,30]],"date-time":"2023-06-30T17:47:43Z","timestamp":1688147263000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":3,"title":["Rational design of an acidic erythritol (ACER) medium for the enhanced isolation of the environmental pathogen Burkholderia pseudomallei from soil samples"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"14","author":[{"given":"Karoline","family":"Assig","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Sabine","family":"Lichtenegger","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Linh N. H.","family":"Bui","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Bettina","family":"Mosbacher","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Anh T. N.","family":"Vu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Daniel","family":"Erhart","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Trung T.","family":"Trinh","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Ivo","family":"Steinmetz","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1965","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2023,6,30]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"847","DOI":"10.1038\/ismej.2011.141","article-title":"Methanogenic archaea are globally ubiquitous in aerated soils and become active under wet anoxic conditions","volume":"6","author":"Angel","year":"2012","journal-title":"ISME J."},{"key":"ref2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"293","DOI":"10.3109\/00313027909061954","article-title":"An improved screening technique for isolation of Pseudomonas pseudomallei from clinical specimens","volume":"11","author":"Ashdown","year":"1979","journal-title":"Pathology"},{"key":"ref3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1134","DOI":"10.4269\/ajtmh.15-0405","article-title":"A review of melioidosis cases in the Americas","volume":"93","author":"Benoit","year":"2015","journal-title":"Am. 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