Sporulation, bacterial cell envelopes and the origin of life
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Abstract
Electron cryotomography (ECT) enables the 3D reconstruction of intact cells in a near-native state. Images produced by ECT have led to the proposal that an ancient sporulation-like event gave rise to the second membrane in diderm bacteria. Tomograms of sporulating monoderm and diderm bacterial cells show how sporulation can lead to the generation of diderm cells. Tomograms of Gram-negative and Gram-positive cell walls and purified sacculi suggest that they are more closely related than previously thought and support the hypothesis that they share a common origin. Mapping the distribution of cell envelope architectures onto a recent phylogenetic tree of life indicates that the diderm cell plan, and therefore the sporulation-like event that gave rise to it, must be very ancient. One explanation for this model is that during the cataclysmic transitions of the early Earth, cellular evolution may have gone through a bottleneck in which only spores survived, which implies that the last bacterial common ancestor was a spore.
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Recent analyses of membranes and cell walls of prokaryotes suggest that LUCA was able to sporulate, i.e., reproduce into a dormant, non-metabolising cell that could survive long periods of harsh conditions such as the late heavy bombardment.
“Recent analyses of membranes and cell walls of prokaryotes suggest that LUCA was able to sporulate, that is, to reproduce into a dormant, non-metabolising cell that could survive long periods of harsh conditions such as the late heavy bombardment [146,166].”
From The Future of Origin of Life Research: Bridging Decades-Old Divisions (2020) · cites this paper as [166]
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- Authors
- Tocheva, E. I., Ortega, D. R., & Jensen, G. J.
- Affiliations
- Université de Montréal (CA)
- California Institute of Technology (US)
- Corresponding author
- Tocheva, Elitza I.
- Jensen, Grant J.
- Venue
- Nature Reviews Microbiology
- Published
- 2016-06-27
- Volume
- 14
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 535-542
- ISSN
- 1740-1526 (ISSN-L)
- 1740-1534
- PMC
- PMC5327842
- OpenAlex
- W2461762286
- Cited by
- 121
- References
- 73
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 18 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 14 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 15 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 4
- FWCI
- 1.16
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Nature Reviews Microbiology (publishedVersion)
- bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- CaltechAUTHORS (California Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute
- National Institute of General Medical Sciences (R01GM101425)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Bacterial Genetics and Biotechnology
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Structural Biology › Advanced Electron Microscopy Techniques and Applications
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies
- Keywords
- bacterial sporulation, Gram-positive bacteria, Gram-negative bacteria, cryo-electron tomography, spore wall, origin of life, early Earth, bacterial phylogeny
- MeSH terms
- Cell Membrane, Cell Wall, Biological Evolution, Gram-Negative Bacteria, Gram-Positive Bacteria, Peptidoglycan, Phylogeny, Spores, Bacterial
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