Cannibalism by sporulating bacteria.
Abstract
Spore formation by the bacterium Bacillus subtilis is an elaborate developmental process that is triggered by nutrient limitation. Here we report that cells that have entered the pathway to sporulate produce and export a killing factor and a signaling protein that act cooperatively to block sister cells from sporulating and to cause them to lyse. The sporulating cells feed on the nutrients thereby released, which allows them to keep growing rather than to complete morphogenesis. We propose that sporulation is a stress-response pathway of last resort and that B. subtilis delays a commitment to spore formation by cannibalizing its siblings.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In B. subtilis, the yvaV-opuB and opcR-opuC gene clusters are separated by five genes involved in the delay of sporulation and the onset of cannibalism (sdpRI and sdpABC).
“In a number of strains, including B. subtilis, the yvaV-opuB and opcR-opuC gene clusters are separated by fife genes involved in the delay of sporulation and the onset of cannibalism (sdpRI and sdpABC) (Gonzalez-Pastor et al., 2003; Figure 2B).”
From Two MarR-Type Repressors Balance Precursor Uptake and Glycine Betaine Synthesis in Bacillus subtilis to Provide Cytoprotection Against Sustained Osmotic Stress (2020) · cites this paper as Gonzalez-Pastor et al., 2003
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Persister cells, dormancy and infectious disease
Lewis, K. (2007) · Nature Reviews Microbiology · doi:10.1038/nrmicro1557 · Cited by 2,052 · see citing works
Lewis, K. (2010) · Annual Review of Microbiology · doi:10.1146/annurev.micro.112408.134306 · Cited by 1,858 · see citing works
Microbial Cell Individuality and the Underlying Sources of Heterogeneity
Avery, S. V. (2006) · Nature Reviews Microbiology · doi:10.1038/nrmicro1460 · Cited by 521 · see citing works
Antimicrobial heteroresistance: An emerging field in need of clarity
El-Halfawy, O. M., & Valvano, M. A. (2015) · Clinical Microbiology Reviews · doi:10.1128/cmr.00058-14 · Cited by 489 · see citing works
Molecular control of bacterial death and lysis
Rice, K. C., & Bayles, K. W. (2008) · Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews · doi:10.1128/mmbr.00030-07 · Cited by 362 · see citing works
Imaging mass spectrometry in microbiology
Watrous, J. D., & Dorrestein, P. C. (2011) · Nature Reviews Microbiology · doi:10.1038/nrmicro2634 · Cited by 338 · see citing works
Ryall, B., Eydallin, G., & Ferenci, T. (2012) · Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews · doi:10.1128/mmbr.05028-11 · Cited by 160 · see citing works
Mitosis can drive cell cannibalism through entosis
Durgan, J., Tseng, Y.-Y., Hamann, J. C., Domart, M.-C., Collinson, L., Hall, A., Overholtzer, M., & Florey, O. (2017) · eLife · doi:10.7554/elife.27134 · Cited by 117 · see citing works
Rancourt, D. G., Thibault, P.-J., Mavrocordatos, D., & Lamarche, G. (2005) · Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta · doi:10.1016/j.gca.2004.07.018 · Cited by 85 · see citing works
Khatri, I., Sharma, G., & Subramanian, S. (2019) · BMC Microbiology · doi:10.1186/s12866-019-1680-7 · Cited by 80 · see citing works
Edlund, A., Yang, Y., Yooseph, S., He, X., Shi, W., & McLean, J. S. (2018) · Microbiome · doi:10.1186/s40168-018-0591-4 · Cited by 57 · see citing works
Warmbold, B., Ronzheimer, S., Freibert, S.-A., Seubert, A., Hoffmann, T., & Bremer, E. (2020) · Frontiers in Microbiology · doi:10.3389/fmicb.2020.01700 · Cited by 17 · see citing works
- Authors
- González-Pastor, J. E., Hobbs, E. C., & Losick, R.
- Affiliations
- Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, The Biological Laboratories, Harvard University, 16 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
- Harvard University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Losick, Richard
- ORCID
- Losick, Richard
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 2003-07-25
- Volume
- 301
- Issue
- 5632
- Pages
- 510-513
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- OpenAlex
- W2099487698
- Cited by
- 579
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 12 · 2025: 19 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 18 · 2022: 17 · 2021: 38 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 31 · 2018: 22 · 2017: 24 · 2016: 24 · 2015: 23 · 2014: 36 · 2013: 28 · 2012: 30
- FWCI
- 13.79
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute of General Medical Sciences (GM-18568)
- Topics
- 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
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Bacterial biofilms and quorum sensing
- Keywords
- Bacillus subtilis, bacterial sporulation, cannibalism, signaling proteins, nutrient limitation, stress response, morphogenesis
- MeSH terms
- Adenosine Triphosphate, Bacillus subtilis, Bacterial Proteins, Bacteriolysis, Genes, Bacterial, Mutation, Operon, Sigma Factor, Spores, Bacterial, Transcription Factors, Transcription, Genetic, Signal Transduction, Gene Expression Regulation, Bacterial, Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis, Gene Expression Profiling
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
