Microbial communication superhighways

Jeffrey W Schertzer; Marvin Whiteley

doi:10.1016/j.cell.2011.02.001

Microbial communication superhighways

Cell. 2011 Feb 18;144(4):469-70. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2011.02.001.

Authors

Jeffrey W Schertzer¹, Marvin Whiteley

Affiliation

¹ Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology, The University of Texas at Austin, 78712, USA.

Abstract

Exchange of information is critical for bacterial social behaviors. Now Dubey and Ben-Yehuda (2011) provide evidence for bacterial "nanotube" conduits that allow microbes to directly exchange cytoplasmic factors. Protein and DNA transfer between distantly related species raises the prospect of a new, widely distributed mechanism of bacterial communication.

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