"Cell" Bacterial biofilms have new features similar to higher organisms

UC San Diego researchers have discovered that a bacterium, Bacillus subtilis, found in soil, produces concentric rings reminiscent of developmental "stripes" produced by dividing clocks

Discovery of the genetic mechanism that organizes bacterial cell communities into surprisingly complex fragments reveals similarities in how plants and animals develop

Over the past few years, research from the lab of biologist Gürol Süel at the University of California, San Diego has uncovered a set of striking features exhibited by groups of bacteria that live together, known as biological membrane

Biofilms are prevalent in the living world, on sewers, kitchen counters, and even the surfaces of our teeth

Süel's lab, along with researchers at Stanford University and Pompeu Fabra University in Spain, have now discovered a signature of biofilms that reveals that these communities are far more advanced than previously thought

Art depicting cellular processes in clocks and wavefronts, complex developmental patterning mechanisms and multicellular organisms

"The biofilms we're seeing are much more complex than we thought," said Süel, a professor of molecular biology in the UC San Diego Division of Biological Sciences, affiliated with the San Diego Center for Systems Biology, the Institute for Biological Circuits, and the Center for Microbial Innovation

Biofilm communities are made up of different types of cells

Image depicting the transition of a Bacillus subtilis biofilm between stressed cells (green) and cell differentiation into dormant spores (magenta)

The researchers' breakthrough was the ability to identify genetic circuits for the ability of biofilms to generate community-wide biofilm concentric circles of gene expression patterns

"Our findings demonstrate that bacterial biofilms employ a developmental patterning mechanism that has hitherto been thought to be unique to vertebrate and plant systems," the authors noted in their paper in the journal Cell

The findings of this study have implications for many areas of research

"We can see that bacterial communities are not just clumps of cells," says Süel, who believes that research collaborations could provide a new paradigm for studying how bacteria develop

Reference: "A segmentation clock patterns cellular differentiation in a bacterial biofilm" by Kwang-Tao Chou, Dong-yeon D.