Transient heterogeneity in extracellular protease production by Bacillus subtilis.

Details

Serval ID
serval:BIB_0A4EBDF6BFCE
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Title
Transient heterogeneity in extracellular protease production by Bacillus subtilis.
Journal
Molecular Systems Biology
Author(s)
Veening J.W., Igoshin O.A., Eijlander R.T., Nijland R., Hamoen L.W., Kuipers O.P.
ISSN
1744-4292 (Electronic)
ISSN-L
1744-4292
Publication state
Published
Issued date
2008
Volume
4
Pages
184
Language
english
Abstract
The most sophisticated survival strategy Bacillus subtilis employs is the differentiation of a subpopulation of cells into highly resistant endospores. To examine the expression patterns of non-sporulating cells within heterogeneous populations, we used buoyant density centrifugation to separate vegetative cells from endospore-containing cells and compared the transcriptome profiles of both subpopulations. This demonstrated the differential expression of various regulons. Subsequent single-cell analyses using promoter-gfp fusions confirmed our microarray results. Surprisingly, only part of the vegetative subpopulation highly and transiently expresses genes encoding the extracellular proteases Bpr (bacillopeptidase) and AprE (subtilisin), both of which are under the control of the DegU transcriptional regulator. As these proteases and their degradation products freely diffuse within the liquid growth medium, all cells within the clonal population are expected to benefit from their activities, suggesting that B. subtilis employs cooperative or even altruistic behavior. To unravel the mechanisms by which protease production heterogeneity within the non-sporulating subpopulation is established, we performed a series of genetic experiments combined with mathematical modeling. Simulations with our model yield valuable insights into how population heterogeneity may arise by the relatively long and variable response times within the DegU autoactivating pathway.
Keywords
Bacillus subtilis/metabolism, Bacterial Proteins/metabolism, Computer Simulation, Gene Expression Regulation, Bacterial, Membrane Transport Proteins/metabolism, Models, Biological, Models, Statistical, Models, Theoretical, Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis, Open Reading Frames, Peptide Hydrolases/metabolism, Spores, Bacterial/metabolism, Systems Biology, Transcription, Genetic
Pubmed
Web of science
Open Access
Yes
Create date
11/10/2016 16:27
Last modification date
20/08/2019 13:32
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