Milestones in Bacillus subtilis sporulation research

Authors:

Eammon P. Riley1, Corinna Schwarz2, Alan I. Derman2 and Javier Lopez-Garrido2
PDF Download PubMed Link
Affiliations:

1 Division of Biological Sciences, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.

2 Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Plön, Germany.

Keywords: 

Bacillus subtilis, sporulation, genetics, SpoIIIE, SpoIIIA, SpoIIQ, sporulation history.

Abbreviations:

SASP – small acid-soluble protein,

Spo– – asporogenous and oligosporogenous mutants,

Spo+ - sporulating strains,

SRS – SpoIIIE Recognition Sequence,

TCA – tricarboxylic acid,

TZM – 2,3,5-triphenyltetrazolium chloride.

Related Article(s)? 

Corresponding Author(s):

Javier Lopez-Garrido, August-Thienemann-Str. 2, 24306 Plön, Germany; Phone: +49 4522 763 216; lopezgarrido@evolbio.mpg.de

Conflict of interest statement:

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Please cite this article as:

Eammon P. Riley, Corinna Schwarz, Alan I. Derman and Javier Lopez-Garrido (2020). Milestones in Bacillus subtilis sporulation research. Microbial Cell 8(1): 1-16. doi: 10.15698/mic2021.01.739

© 2020 Riley et al. This is an open-access article released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduc-tion in any medium, provided the original author and source are acknowledged.

Abstract:

Endospore formation has been a rich field of research for more than a century, and has benefited from the powerful genetic tools available in Bacillus subtilis. In this review, we highlight foundational discoveries that shaped the sporulation field, from its origins to the present day, tracing a chronology that spans more than one hundred eighty years. We detail how cell-specific gene expression has been harnessed to investigate the existence and function of intercellular proteinaceous channels in sporulating cells, and we illustrate the rapid progress in our understanding of the cell biology of sporulation in recent years using the process of chromosome translocation as a storyline. Finally, we sketch general aspects of sporulation that remain largely unexplored, and that we envision will be fruitful areas of future research.

doi: 10.15698/mic2021.01.739
Volume 8, pp. 1 to 16, published 27/11/2020.

Leave a comment