Fruiting body formation by Bacillus subtilis
Open accessAbstract
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.
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This group of Bacilli includes the legacy laboratory strains B. subtilis subspecies subtilis 168, B. subtilis subspecies spizizensis, and B. subtilis strain 3610.
“This group of Bacilli include the legacy laboratory strains B. subtilis subspecies subtilis 168 (Kunst et al., 1997) and B. subtilis subspecies spizizensis, (Zeigler, 2011), as well as the B. subtilis strain 3610, an isolate widely used to study biofilm formation in this species (Branda et al., 2001).”
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- Authors
- Branda, S. S., González-Pastor, J. E., Ben-Yehuda, S., Losick, R., & Kolter, R.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University (US)
- Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115; and Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138
- Corresponding author
- Kolter, Roberto
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2001-09-25
- Volume
- 98
- Issue
- 20
- Pages
- 11621-11626
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC58779
- OpenAlex
- W2084524312
- Cited by
- 1,129
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 37 · 2025: 47 · 2024: 48 · 2023: 49 · 2022: 54 · 2021: 89 · 2020: 62 · 2019: 58 · 2018: 63 · 2017: 60 · 2016: 54 · 2015: 57 · 2014: 63 · 2013: 54 · 2012: 52
- FWCI
- 6.18
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health (GM18568)
- National Institute of General Medical Sciences (R01GM058213, R37GM018568, GM58213, GM-18568, R01GM018568)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Bacterial biofilms and quorum sensing
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Bacterial Genetics and Biotechnology
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Bacillus and Francisella bacterial research
- Keywords
- Bacillus subtilis, fruiting body formation, sporulation, biofilm, multicellularity, cell differentiation, exopolysaccharides, surfactin, wild isolate, spatial organization
- MeSH terms
- Bacillus subtilis, beta-Galactosidase, Escherichia coli, Spores, Bacterial, Mutagenesis
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