Abstract
When encountering new environments or changes to their external milieu, bacteria use elaborate mechanisms to respond accordingly. Here, we describe how Vibrio parahaemolyticus coordinates two such mechanisms – differentiation and chemotaxis. V. parahaemolyticus differentiates between two distinct cell types: short rod-shaped swimmer cells and highly elongated swarmer cells. We show that the intracellular organization of chemotactic signaling arrays changes according to the differentiation state. In swimmer cells chemotaxis arrays are strictly polarly localized, but in swarmer cells arrays form both at the cell poles and at irregular intervals along the entire cell length. Furthermore, the formation of lateral arrays increases with cell length of swarmer cells. Occurrence of lateral signaling arrays is not simply a consequence of the elongated state of swarmer cells, but is instead differentiation state-specific. Moreover, our data suggest that swarmer cells employ two distinct mechanisms for localization of polar and lateral signaling arrays, respectively. Furthermore, cells show a distinct differentiation and localization pattern of chemosensory arrays, depending on their location within swarm colonies, which likely allows for the organism to simultaneously swarm across surfaces while sustaining a pool of swimmers immediately capable of exploring new liquid surroundings.
Highlights
Bacteria often experience changes in their external environment and have developed various strategies to respond
We show that there is a correlation between swarmer cell length and the number of signaling arrays formed within the swarmer cell, where the number of lateral clusters formed increases with increased cell length
We have performed a detailed analysis of the intracellular localization of chemotactic signaling arrays during the life cycles of V. parahaemolyticus and shown that in contrast to swimmer cells, where chemotactic signaling arrays are strictly confined to the cell poles, swarmer cells have two distinct localization patterns; bi-polar localization and lateral localization along the cell length (Gestwicki et al, 2000)
Summary
Bacteria often experience changes in their external environment and have developed various strategies to respond . A distinct type of differentiation utilized by many bacteria, including species of Serratia (Alberti and Harshey, 1990), Aeromonas (Kirov et al, 2002), Salmonella (Harshey, 1994; Harshey and Matsuyama, 1994), Proteus (Rather, 2005), and Vibrio (McCarter, 2004), is the differentiation between a planktonic swimmer cell and a swarmer cell that is specialized for movement over solid surfaces or in viscous environments (McCarter, 2004). One organism that undergoes such differentiation between swimmer and swarmer cells is Vibrio parahaemolyticus, a worldwide human pathogen and major cause of seafood related gastroenteritis (McCarter and Silverman, 1990; McCarter, 1999, 2004, 2010; Makino et al, 2003; Stewart and McCarter, 2003; Gode-Potratz and McCarter, 2011).
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