Interspecies Social Spreading: Interaction between Two Sessile Soil Bacteria Leads to Emergence of Surface Motility.

ABSTRACT: Bacteria often live in complex communities in which they interact with other organisms. Consideration of the social environment of bacteria can reveal emergent traits and behaviors that would be overlooked by studying bacteria in isolation. Here we characterize a social trait which emerges upon interaction between the distantly related soil bacteria Pseudomonas fluorescens Pf0-1 and Pedobacter sp. strain V48. On hard agar, which is not permissive for motility of the monoculture of either species, coculture reveals an emergent phenotype that we term "interspecies social spreading," where the mixed colony spreads across the hard surface. We show that initiation of social spreading requires close association between the two species of bacteria. Both species remain associated throughout the sp

SUBMITTER: McCully LM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6354810 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature