Bacterial growth in multicellular aggregates leads to the emergence of complex life cycles.

ABSTRACT: Facultative multicellular behaviors expand the metabolic capacity and physiological resilience of bacteria. Despite their ubiquity in nature, we lack an understanding of how these behaviors emerge from cellular-scale phenomena. Here, we show how the coupling between growth and resource gradient formation leads to the emergence of multicellular lifecycles in a marine bacterium. Under otherwise carbon-limited growth conditions, Vibrio splendidus 12B01 forms clonal multicellular groups to collectively harvest carbon from soluble polymers of the brown-algal polysaccharide alginate. As they grow, groups phenotypically differentiate into two spatially distinct sub-populations: a static "shell" surrounding a motile, carbon-storing "core." Differentiation of these two sub-populations coincides wit

SUBMITTER: Schwartzman JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9496226 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature