Transcriptional patterns in both host and bacterium underlie a daily rhythm of anatomical and metabolic change in a beneficial symbiosis.

ABSTRACT: Mechanisms for controlling symbiont populations are critical for maintaining the associations that exist between a host and its microbial partners. We describe here the transcriptional, metabolic, and ultrastructural characteristics of a diel rhythm that occurs in the symbiosis between the squid Euprymna scolopes and the luminous bacterium Vibrio fischeri. The rhythm is driven by the host's expulsion from its light-emitting organ of most of the symbiont population each day at dawn. The transcriptomes of both the host epithelium that supports the symbionts and the symbiont population itself were characterized and compared at four times over this daily cycle. The greatest fluctuation in gene expression of both partners occurred as the day began. Most notable was an up-regulation in the host

SUBMITTER: Wier AM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2836665 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature