A team of scientists led an experimental study to determine the relationships between subpopulations of cells within the biofilm of a model microbe, revealing new insights regarding their potential. These images show top-down views of colonies of Bacillus subtilis grown on agar plates. The image on the left is a brightfield image while the one on the right shows false-color fluorescence of this colony. These bacterial cells contain two reporter constructs that cause the cells to produce two distinct fluorescence signals (shown as green and pink) when one or both of those genes are expressed.
News — Biofilms offer protection to soil microorganisms, while supporting the important cellular processes that allow them to survive. But the phenotypic heterogeneity of the cells and relationships among subpopulations of cells within these biofilms remains largely unknown.
A multi-institutional team of scientists from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, University of Massachusetts Chan Medical, and the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a Department of Energy Office of Science user facility, led an experimental study to determine the relationships between the subpopulations of cells within these biofilms using Bacillus subtilis, a soil dwelling and biofilm-forming bacterium. The study revealed that current cellular heterogeneity models oversimplify the ability of bacterial cells to differentiate into specific cell types and perform tasks. Data from this research provides a framework with which to further study and make predictions about the diverse cellular phenotypes in B. subtilis biofilms.
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