Calcium Promotes T6SS-Mediated Killing and Aggregation between Competing Symbionts

作者：Lauren Speare, Aundre Jackson, Alecia N. Septer · 发表于：Microbiology Spectrum · 年份：2022 · DOI：10.1128/spectrum.01397-22 · 被引用次数：17 · 研究领域：Vibrio bacteria research studies、Antibiotic Resistance in Bacteria、Bacterial biofilms and quorum sensing

Microbes deploy competitive mechanisms to gain access to resources such as nutrients or space within an ecological niche. Identifying when and where these strategies are employed can be challenging given the complexity and variability of most natural systems; therefore, studies evaluating specific cues that conditionally regulate interbacterial competition can inform the ecological context for such competition. In this work, we identified a pH-dependent chemical cue in seawater, calcium, which promotes activation of a contact-dependent interbacterial weapon in the marine symbiont Vibrio fischeri. This finding underscores the importance of using ecologically relevant salts in growth media and the ability of bacterial cells to sense and integrate multiple environmental cues to assess the need for a weapon. Identification of these cues provides insight into the types of environments where employing a weapon is advantageous to the survival and propagation of a bacterial population.