2023-11-24 19:15:22
In nature, bacteria often live in communities. They collectively colonize our gut, also known as the gut microbiome, or form biofilms like dental plaque. Living in communities provides many advantages to individual microbes. They are more resistant to adverse environmental conditions, conquer new territories more easily and benefit from each other.
The development of bacterial communities is a very complex process in which bacteria form intricate three-dimensional structures. In a new study, a team including, among others, Knut Drescher and Hannah Jeckel, from the University of Basel in Switzerland, carefully investigated the extent to which this collaboration between bacteria in a colony extends and has confirmed for the first time that they cooperate and share nutrients. between generations, as if it were a social security system.
This verification has been possible thanks to a new technique that makes it possible to track genetic expression during the development of bacterial communities over space and time.
The researchers focused on bacteria of the species Bacillus subtilis.
This bacteria is very common in our intestinal flora. Drescher and his colleagues have found that these bacteria, which live in communities, cooperate and interact with each other in a way that allows them to provide resources for future generations.
Community of bacteria of the species Bacillus subtilis bacteria in a culture medium. The photo was taken with a microscope and has been reprocessed to give different colors to different things, in order to facilitate the identification of each one (Image: University of Basel, Biozentrum)
The study is titled “Simultaneous spatiotemporal transcriptomics and microscopy of Bacillus subtilis swarm development reveal cooperation across generations.” And it has been published in the academic journal Nature Microbiology. (Source: NCYT from Amazings)
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