Abstract
Recent studies have revealed that the regulated death of bacterial cells is important for biofilm development. Following cell death, a sub-population of the dead bacteria lyse and release genomic DNA, which then has an essential role in intercellular adhesion and biofilm stability. This Opinion focuses on the role of regulated cell death and lysis in biofilm development and provides a functional comparison between bacterial programmed cell death and apoptosis. The hypothesis that the differential regulation of these processes during biofilm development contributes to the antibiotic tolerance of biofilm cells is also explored.
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Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank M. Chaussee, K. Rice, G. Somerville and R. Young for helpful comments and suggestions made during the preparation of this manuscript. In addition, the assistance of V. Vonstein in compiling the list of cid and lrg homologues is appreciated. This comparative analysis was performed in the SEED environment, which was developed by the Fellowship for Interpretation of Genomes in collaboration with an international team of researchers and is available through the National Microbial Pathogen Data Resource. Support was provided by the National Institutes of Health (R01AI038,901) and the US Department of Defense (DAAD 19-03-1-0191).
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Bayles, K. The biological role of death and lysis in biofilm development. Nat Rev Microbiol 5, 721–726 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro1743
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro1743
