Dataset Information

Extending the minimal model of metabolic oscillations in Bacillus subtilis biofilms.

ABSTRACT: Biofilms are composed of microorganisms attached to a solid surface or floating on top of a liquid surface. They pose challenges in the field of medicine but can also have useful applications in industry. Regulation of biofilm growth is complex and still largely elusive. Oscillations are thought to be advantageous for biofilms to cope with nutrient starvation and chemical attacks. Recently, a minimal mathematical model has been employed to describe the oscillations in Bacillus subtilis biofilms. In this paper, we investigate four different modifications to that minimal model in order to better understand the oscillations in biofilms. Our first modification is towards making a gradient of metabolites from the center of the biofilm to the periphery. We find that it does not improve the model and is therefore, unnecessary. We then use realistic Michaelis-Menten kinetics to replace the highly simple mass-action kinetics for one of the reactions. Further, we use reversible reactions to mimic the diffusion in biofilms. As the final modification, we check the combined effect of using Michaelis-Menten kinetics and reversible reactions on the model behavior. We find that these two modifications alone or in combination improve the description of the biological scenario.

SUBMITTER: Garde R

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7101430 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Extending the minimal model of metabolic oscillations in Bacillus subtilis biofilms.

Garde Ravindra R Ibrahim Bashar B Schuster Stefan S

Scientific reports 20200327 1

Biofilms are composed of microorganisms attached to a solid surface or floating on top of a liquid surface. They pose challenges in the field of medicine but can also have useful applications in industry. Regulation of biofilm growth is complex and still largely elusive. Oscillations are thought to be advantageous for biofilms to cope with nutrient starvation and chemical attacks. Recently, a minimal mathematical model has been employed to describe the oscillations in Bacillus subtilis biofilms. ...[more]

PMID: 32221356

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Project description:Bacillus subtilis is a soil-dwelling bacterium that can form biofilms, or communities of cells surrounded by a self-produced extracellular matrix. In biofilms, genetically identical cells often exhibit heterogeneous transcriptional phenotypes, so that subpopulations of cells carry out essential yet costly cellular processes that allow the entire population to thrive. Surprisingly, the extent of phenotypic heterogeneity and the relationships between subpopulations of cells within biofilms of even in well-studied bacterial systems like B. subtilis remains largely unknown. To determine relationships between these subpopulations of cells, we created 182 strains containing pairwise combinations of fluorescent transcriptional reporters for the expression state of 14 different genes associated with potential cellular subpopulations. We determined the spatial organization of the expression of these genes within biofilms using confocal microscopy, which revealed that many reporters localized to distinct areas of the biofilm, some of which were co-localized. We used flow cytometry to quantify reporter co-expression, which revealed that many cells "multi-task," simultaneously expressing two reporters. These data indicate that prior models describing B. subtilis cells as differentiating into specific cell types, each with a specific task or function, were oversimplified. Only a few subpopulations of cells, including surfactin and plipastatin producers, as well as sporulating and competent cells, appear to have distinct roles based on the set of genes examined here. These data will provide us with a framework with which to further study and make predictions about the roles of diverse cellular phenotypes in B. subtilis biofilms. IMPORTANCE Many microbes differentiate, expressing diverse phenotypes to ensure their survival in various environments. However, studies on phenotypic differentiation have typically examined only a few phenotypes at one time, thus limiting our knowledge about the extent of differentiation and phenotypic overlap in the population. We investigated the spatial organization and gene expression relationships for genes important in B. subtilis biofilms. In doing so, we mapped spatial gene expression patterns and expanded the number of cell populations described in the B. subtilis literature. It is likely that other bacteria also display complex differentiation patterns within their biofilms. Studying the extent of cellular differentiation in other microbes may be important when designing therapies for disease-causing bacteria, where studying only a single phenotype may be masking underlying phenotypic differentiation relevant to infection outcomes.

Dataset Information

Extending the minimal model of metabolic oscillations in Bacillus subtilis biofilms.

Publications

Extending the minimal model of metabolic oscillations in Bacillus subtilis biofilms.

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