Bacterial solutions to multicellularity: a tale of biofilms, filaments and fruiting bodies

@article{Claessen2014BacterialST,
  title={Bacterial solutions to multicellularity: a tale of biofilms, filaments and fruiting bodies},
  author={Dennis Claessen and Daniel E. Rozen and Oscar P. Kuipers and Lotte S{\o}gaard-Andersen and Gilles P. van Wezel},
  journal={Nature Reviews Microbiology},
  year={2014},
  volume={12},
  pages={115-124}
}
Although bacteria frequently live as unicellular organisms, many spend at least part of their lives in complex communities, and some have adopted truly multicellular lifestyles and have abandoned unicellular growth. These transitions to multicellularity have occurred independently several times for various ecological reasons, resulting in a broad range of phenotypes. In this Review, we discuss the strategies that are used by bacteria to form and grow in multicellular structures that have… 
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341 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
7
Background Citations
141
Methods Citations
4
Results Citations
3

341 Citations

Multicellular Life Cycles as an Emergent Property in Filamentous Bacteria
TLDR
The chapter offers an overview of the mathematical setup and of the validation experiments in natural populations of filamentous bacteria that show the presence of a common pattern in terms of filament growth, which provides a hypothesis for the emergence of primitive multicellular life cycles in simple organisms.
Bacterial growth in multicellular aggregates leads to the emergence of complex life cycles
TLDR
The coupling between growth and spatial gradient formation leads to the emergence of a complex lifecycle, akin to those known for multicellular bacteria, and it is proposed that phenotypic differentiation promotes the resilience of 12B01 groups by enabling clonal groups to grow larger and propagate more effectively.
On the evolution of bacterial multicellularity.
Bacterial Ventures into Multicellularity: Collectivism through Individuality
TLDR
An elegant example of how the spatial arrangement of differentiated cells gives rise to collective behavior in Bacillus subtilus colonies is reported, further demonstrating the similarity of bacterial collectives to higher multicellular organisms.
Modulation of bacterial multicellularity via spatiotemporal polysaccharide secretion
TLDR
It is demonstrated that in the social δ-proteobacterium Myxococcus xanthus, the secretion of a novel secreted biosurfactant polysaccharide is temporally and spatially modulated within communities, mediating swarm migration as well as the formation of multicellular swarm biofilms and fruiting bodies.
Three faces of biofilms: a microbial lifestyle, a nascent multicellular organism, and an incubator for diversity
TLDR
This work discusses biofilm both as collections of individual cells, and as multicellular biological individuals, and introduces the concept of biofilms as unique incubators of diversity for the microbial world.
Levels of selection in biofilms: multispecies biofilms are not evolutionary individuals
TLDR
This paper defends the conservative consensus that selection acts primarily upon microbial cells, and argues that multispecies biofilms are evolutionary individuals.
Varied solutions to multicellularity: The biophysical and evolutionary consequences of diverse intercellular bonds
TLDR
The type of intercellular bond present during early steps in the transition toMulticellularity constrains future evolutionary and biophysical dynamics for the lineage, affecting the origin of multicellular life cycles, cell–cell communication, cellular differentiation, and multice cellular morphogenesis.
A mechanistic explanation of the transition to simple multicellularity in fungi
TLDR
A comparative model of osmotrophic resource acquisition is developed to show that compared to unicellular bacteria, multicellular fungi can more rapidly colonise immobile, nutrient poor resources because exoenzymes provide greater or longer lasting benefits to mycelial organisms.
Multicellular group formation in response to predators in the alga Chlorella vulgaris
TLDR
It is found that either predators or just predator exoproducts promote colony formation; higher predator densities cause more colonies to form; and colony formation in this system is facultative, with populations returning to being unicellular when the predation pressure is removed.
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