Peer pressure from a Proteus mirabilis self-recognition system controls participation in cooperative swarm motility.

ABSTRACT: Colonies of the opportunistic pathogen Proteus mirabilis can distinguish self from non-self: in swarming colonies of two different strains, one strain excludes the other from the expanding colony edge. Predominant models characterize bacterial kin discrimination as immediate antagonism towards non-kin cells, typically through delivery of toxin effector molecules from one cell into its neighbor. Upon effector delivery, receiving cells must either neutralize it by presenting a cognate anti-toxin as would a clonal sibling, or suffer cell death or irreversible growth inhibition as would a non-kin cell. Here we expand this paradigm to explain the non-lethal Ids self-recognition system, which stops access to a social behavior in P. mirabilis by selectively and transiently inducing non-self cells

SUBMITTER: Tipping MJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6682164 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature