TY - JOUR
T1 - Fruiting body formation by Bacillus subtilis
AU - Branda, Steven S.
AU - González-Pastor, José Eduardo
AU - Ben-Yehuda, Sigal
AU - Losick, Richard
AU - Kolter, Roberto
PY - 2001/9/25
Y1 - 2001/9/25
N2 - Spore formation by the bacterium Bacillus subtilis has long been studied as a model for cellular differentiation, but predominantly as a single cell. When analyzed within the context of highly structured, surface-associated communities (biofilms), spore formation was discovered to have heretofore unsuspected spatial organization. Initially, motile cells differentiated into aligned chains of attached cells that eventually produced aerial structures, or fruiting bodies, that served as preferential sites for sporulation. Fruiting body formation depended on regulatory genes required early in sporulation and on genes evidently needed for exopolysaccharide and surfactin production. The formation of aerial structures was robust in natural isolates but not in laboratory strains, an indication that multicellularity has been lost during domestication of B. subtilis. Other microbial differentiation processes long thought to involve only single cells could display the spatial organization characteristic of multicellular organisms when studied with recent natural isolates.
AB - Spore formation by the bacterium Bacillus subtilis has long been studied as a model for cellular differentiation, but predominantly as a single cell. When analyzed within the context of highly structured, surface-associated communities (biofilms), spore formation was discovered to have heretofore unsuspected spatial organization. Initially, motile cells differentiated into aligned chains of attached cells that eventually produced aerial structures, or fruiting bodies, that served as preferential sites for sporulation. Fruiting body formation depended on regulatory genes required early in sporulation and on genes evidently needed for exopolysaccharide and surfactin production. The formation of aerial structures was robust in natural isolates but not in laboratory strains, an indication that multicellularity has been lost during domestication of B. subtilis. Other microbial differentiation processes long thought to involve only single cells could display the spatial organization characteristic of multicellular organisms when studied with recent natural isolates.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0035949604&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1073/pnas.191384198
DO - 10.1073/pnas.191384198
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C2 - 11572999
AN - SCOPUS:0035949604
SN - 0027-8424
VL - 98
SP - 11621
EP - 11626
JO - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
IS - 20
ER -