Forum for Science, Industry and Business

Bacteria use their enemy -- phage -- for 'self-recognition'

Recently, scientists discovered that cells can distinguish themselves from closely related competitors through the use of a virus, and the harboring of phage in bacterial genomes benefits host cells when facing competitors in the environment. These findings were published in Cell Reports on April 16.

Demarcation lines (shown by red arrows) developed between cells of self and of non-self.

Credit: WANG Xiaoxue

The study was conducted by a group led by Prof. WANG Xiaoxue at the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology (SCSIO) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Prof. Thomas Wood at Pennsylvania State University in the United States.

Researchers found that a boundary (demarcation line) was formed due to phage lysis between different swimming Escherichia coli strains but not between identical clones; hence, motile bacterial cells discriminated between self and non-self.

The basis for this self-recognition is a novel, 49 kb, T1-type, lytic phage of the family Siphoviridae (named SW1) that controls formation of the demarcation line by utilizing one of the host's cryptic prophage proteins, YfdM of CPS-53, to propagate.

SW1 provides a conditional benefit to E. coli K-12 compared to the identical strain that lacks the phage. A demarcation line also forms when strains harbor either the lysogenic phage φ80 or lambda and encounter siblings that lack the lysogen.

Thus, the relationship between a virus and its cellular host should be re-evaluated since a viral infection is sometimes beneficial.

A bacterial cell infected by a lytic phage may have conditional benefits absent in siblings that lack the phage. In addition, these benefits rely on the infected strain utilizing the tools it obtained from a very ancient enemy, a cryptic prophage.

WANG Xiaoxue | EurekAlert!
Further information:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2019.03.070

Im Focus: Better thermal conductivity by adjusting the arrangement of atoms

Adjusting the thermal conductivity of materials is one of the challenges nanoscience is currently facing. Together with colleagues from the Netherlands and Spain, researchers from the University of Basel have shown that the atomic vibrations that determine heat generation in nanowires can be controlled through the arrangement of atoms alone. The scientists will publish the results shortly in the journal Nano Letters.

In the electronics and computer industry, components are becoming ever smaller and more powerful. However, there are problems with the heat generation. It is...

Im Focus: First-ever visualizations of electrical gating effects on electronic structure

Scientists have visualised the electronic structure in a microelectronic device for the first time, opening up opportunities for finely-tuned high performance electronic devices.

Physicists from the University of Warwick and the University of Washington have developed a technique to measure the energy and momentum of electrons in...

Im Focus: Megakaryocytes act as „bouncers“ restraining cell migration in the bone marrow

Scientists at the University Würzburg and University Hospital of Würzburg found that megakaryocytes act as “bouncers” and thus modulate bone marrow niche properties and cell migration dynamics. The study was published in July in the Journal “Haematologica”.

Hematopoiesis is the process of forming blood cells, which occurs predominantly in the bone marrow. The bone marrow produces all types of blood cells: red...

Im Focus: Artificial neural network resolves puzzles from condensed matter physics: Which is the perfect quantum theory?

For some phenomena in quantum many-body physics several competing theories exist. But which of them describes a quantum phenomenon best? A team of researchers from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and Harvard University in the United States has now successfully deployed artificial neural networks for image analysis of quantum systems.

Is that a dog or a cat? Such a classification is a prime example of machine learning: artificial neural networks can be trained to analyze images by looking...

Im Focus: Extremely hard yet metallically conductive: Bayreuth researchers develop novel material with high-tech prospects

An international research group led by scientists from the University of Bayreuth has produced a previously unknown material: Rhenium nitride pernitride. Thanks to combining properties that were previously considered incompatible, it looks set to become highly attractive for technological applications. Indeed, it is a super-hard metallic conductor that can withstand extremely high pressures like a diamond. A process now developed in Bayreuth opens up the possibility of producing rhenium nitride pernitride and other technologically interesting materials in sufficiently large quantity for their properties characterisation. The new findings are presented in "Nature Communications".

The possibility of finding a compound that was metallically conductive, super-hard, and ultra-incompressible was long considered unlikely in science. It was...