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…
341 Citations
Multicellular Life Cycles as an Emergent Property in Filamentous Bacteria
- Biology
- 2015
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
- BiologyCurrent Biology
- 2022
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.
Bacterial Ventures into Multicellularity: Collectivism through Individuality
- BiologyPLoS biology
- 2015
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
- BiologybioRxiv
- 2020
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
- BiologyNPJ biofilms and microbiomes
- 2021
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
- Biology
- 2016
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
- BiologyBiophysics reviews
- 2022
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
- BiologyNature Communications
- 2020
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
- BiologyJournal of evolutionary biology
- 2016
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.
References
SHOWING 1-10 OF 129 REFERENCES
Thinking about bacterial populations as multicellular organisms.
- BiologyAnnual review of microbiology
- 1998
Bacteria benefit from multicellular cooperation by using cellular division of labor, accessing resources that cannot effectively be utilized by single cells, collectively defending against antagonists, and optimizing population survival by differentiating into distinct cell types.
Bacterial biofilms: prokaryotic adventures in multicellularity.
- BiologyCurrent opinion in microbiology
- 2003
Compartmentalized function through cell differentiation in filamentous cyanobacteria
- BiologyNature Reviews Microbiology
- 2010
This Review addresses cyanob bacterial intercellular communication, the supracellular structure of the cyanobacterial filament and the basic principles that govern the process of heterocyst differentiation.
Experimental evolution of an alternating uni- and multicellular life cycle in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii
- BiologyNature communications
- 2013
It is shown that multicellular complexity, including development from a single cell, can evolve rapidly in a unicellular organism that has never had aMulticellular ancestor, and that unice cellular propagules are adaptive even in the absence of intercellular conflict, maximizing cluster-level fecundity.
The Evolution of Multicellularity: A Minor Major Transition?
- Biology
- 2007
Benefits of increased size and functional specialization of cells have repeatedly promoted the evolution of multicellular organisms from unicellular ancestors, but these benefits may be opposed by genetic conflicts that arise when mutant cell lineages promote their own increase at the expense of the integrity of the multice cellular organism.
Fruiting body formation by Bacillus subtilis
- BiologyProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
- 2001
Fruiting body formation depended on regulatory genes required early in sporulation and on genes evidently needed for exopolysaccharide and surfactin production, an indication that multicellularity has been lost during domestication of B. subtilis.
Experimental evolution of multicellularity
- BiologyProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- 2012
Experimental evolution shows that key aspects of multicellular complexity, a subject of central importance to biology, can readily evolve from unicellular eukaryotes.
Phagotrophy by a flagellate selects for colonial prey: A possible origin of multicellularity
- BiologyEvolutionary Ecology
- 2004
Self-replicating, stable colonies of Chlorella vulgaris that retained the eight-celled form indefinitely in continuous culture and when plated onto agar were virtually immune to predation by the flagellate.
The sociobiology of biofilms.
- BiologyFEMS microbiology reviews
- 2009
It is argued that understanding this balance between competition and cooperation is central to building a complete and predictive model of biofilm formation, and it is concluded that the appearance of organization in biofilms can emerge without active coordination.
Sucrose Utilization in Budding Yeast as a Model for the Origin of Undifferentiated Multicellularity
- BiologyPLoS Biology
- 2011
It is proposed that the prior use of public goods led to selection for the incomplete cell separation that first produced multicellularity.