Bacterial predation transforms the landscape and community assembly of biofilms.

ABSTRACT: The bacterium Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus attaches to the exterior of a Gram-negative prey cell, enters the periplasm, and harvests resources to replicate before lysing the host to find new prey.^1-7 Predatory bacteria such as this are common in many natural environments,^8-13 as are groups of matrix-bound prey cell clusters, termed biofilms.^14-16 Despite the ubiquity of both predatory bacteria and biofilm-dwelling prey, the interaction between B. bacteriovorus and prey inside biofilms has received little attention and has not yet been studied at the micrometer scale. Filling this knowledge gap is critical to understanding bacterial predator-prey interaction in nature. Here we show that B. bacteriovorus is able to attack biofilms of the pathogen Vibrio cholera

SUBMITTER: Wucher BR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8588571 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature