Individual bacterial cells cooperate by secreting products that are beneficial for the community, but costly to produce. It has been shown that cooperation is critical for microbial communities, most notably in biofilms, however the degree of cooperation strongly depends on the culturing conditions. The heterogeneity of biofilm matrix production will be examined in the presence of non-producer population. Experimental evolution will be used to understand the solutions bacterial cells use to adjust the production of matrix production in mixed communities.
References:
Contact details:
Dr. Ákos T. Kovács
Head of Junior Research Group Terrestrial Biofilms
Institute of Microbiology
Friedrich Schiller University Jena
Neugasse 23
D-07743 Jena
Tel.: +49-(0)3641 9 49980
akos-tibor.kovacs(at)uni-jena.de
Homepage Link
Co-workers:
References:
Kovács
Grau, R. R., de Oña, P., Kunert, M., Leñini, C., Gallegos-Monterrosa, R., Mhatre, E., Vileta, D., Donato, V., Hölscher, T., Boland, W., Kuipers, O. P. and Kovács, Á. T. (2015) A Duo of Potassium-Responsive Histidine Kinases Govern the Multicellular Destiny of Bacillus subtilis. MBio, 6.
Hölscher, T., Bartels, B., Lin, Y.-C., Gallegos-Monterrosa, R., Price-Whelan, A., Kolter, R., Dietrich, L. E. P. and Kovács, Á. T. (2015) Motility, Chemotaxis and Aerotaxis Contribute to Competitiveness during Bacterial Pellicle Biofilm Development. J. Mol. Biol.
Schneider, J., Klein, T., Mielich-Süss, B., Koch, G., Franke, C., Kuipers, O. P., Kovács, Á. T., Sauer, M. and Lopez, D. (2015) Spatio-temporal remodeling of functional membrane microdomains organizes the signaling networks of a bacterium. PLoS Genet., 11, e1005140.
van Gestel, J., Weissing, F. J., Kuipers, O. P. and Kovács, A. T. (2014) Density of founder cells affects spatial pattern formation and cooperation in Bacillus subtilis biofilms. ISME J, 8, 2069-2079.
Kovács, A. T. (2014) Impact of spatial distribution on the development of mutualism in microbes. Front Microbiol, 5, 649.
Diethmaier, C., Newman, J. A., Kovács, A. T., Kaever, V., Herzberg, C., Rodrigues, C., Boonstra, M., Kuipers, O. P., Lewis, R. J. and Stülke, J. (2014) The YmdB phosphodiesterase is a global regulator of late adaptive responses in Bacillus subtilis. J. Bacteriol., 196, 265-275.