482: Colony Concentric Clock Construction

This episode: Single-celled bacteria can act independently to
create patterns and structure in their biofilm communities!


Download Episode (9.6 MB, 14.0 minutes)

Show notes:
Microbe of the episode: Dictyostelium discoideum Skipper
virus


News item


Takeaways





Large multicellular organisms like us have interesting
mechanisms for using one set of genetic instructions
present in all cells to form a large, complex community of
many different types of cells with different structures and
functions, all working together. Single-celled microbes do
not have the same requirements for genetic or structural
complexity, but they do often display interesting communal
patterns and behaviors.

In this study, bacteria growing in colonies on agar
displayed a particular mechanism of pattern formation
previously seen only in eukaryotes, called segmentation
clock or clock and wavefront process. In this process, the
cells in the colony are all acting individually without
communication with each other, but nevertheless form a
repeating ring structure in the colony as it grows,
possibly allowing some measure of differentiation of cells
that could help the community survive various challenges.


 
Journal Paper:
Chou K-T, Lee DD, Chiou J, Galera-Laporta L, Ly S,
Garcia-Ojalvo J, Süel GM. 2022. A segmentation clock patterns
cellular differentiation in a bacterial biofilm. Cell
185:145-157.e13.

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