Going Loopy

To successfully survive in an environment, bacteria have to overcome many a challenge – for example migrating to food sources, which could be at some distance from each other. To do this, the bacterium Bacillus subtilis – that lives in the soil and is used in producing antibiotics – not only uses its whip-like flagellum to propel it in a kind of swimming motion, it can also ‘slide’. In doing so, B.subtilis form multicellular structures, allowing many to move forward and spread in bundles. These chains of cells, called van Gogh bundles, are strongly aligned (top panel) to form threadlike loops at the edge of the bacterial colony. As the loops grow they push away and the whole colony moves from the centre, forming a petal shape at the colony edge (bottom panel). Insight into this type of systematic cell organisation will help to understand how other bacterial species function.

Written by Katie Panteli

Katie Panteli

Writer

Katie, a Warwick Biomed graduate, works for a science-publishing house in London with some of the world's most respected scientific minds. She's most interested in human biology, anything and everything that makes us tick.

• Image from work by Roberto Kolter and colleagues
• Harvard Medical School, USA
• Originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)
• Research published in PLOS Biology, April 2015