Grip and Go

Most bacteria are free spirits, drifting from one place to another. But eventually some settle together to wrap tightly around a surface. These persistent slime layers, biofilms, can be bad news in the body or on medical equipment. To study how they grip and grow, researchers examined the protein TasA (red in the video of growing cells), which forms part of the extracellular matrix – the structural glue that holds the film in place. They found that TasA can also act as a signal to prompt a subset of film’s cells to kick into action, driving expansion (boosted cells in yellow). Invasive biofilms in the body being able to expand towards other tissues, rather than be a static carpet as previously thought, is a worrying proposition. TasA is both the adhesive glue and fuel to keep going, so may be key to reversing progress and keeping bacteria at bay.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Video from work by Nitai Steinberg and Alona Keren-Paz, and colleagues
• Department of Molecular Genetics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel
• Video copyright held by the original authors
• Video published in Science Signaling, May 2020