A never-before-seen way bacteria infect cells
Nature Communications, describes how a new species of bacteria, Bordetella atropi, which the researchers named for the Greek fate Atropos responsible for cutting the threads of life, invades its roundworm host.
And it is aptly named because the bacteria changes its shape into a long thread, growing up to 100 times the usual size of one bacterium in the span of 30 hours without dividing.
By altering the genes of Bordetella atropi, the research team discovered that this invasive threading relies on the same genes and molecules that other bacteria use when they are in a nutrient-rich environment. However, these other bacteria only use this pathway to make subtly larger cells, whereas the B. atropi bacteria grows continuously.
Other bacteria often transform into threads, called filamentation, in response to dangerous environments or damage to their DNA. This lets them continue to grow in size, but delay dividing into new bacterial cells until they fix the damage caused by the stress.
Here, however, the researchers were the first to observe filamentation as a way of spreading from cell to cell in a living organism for a purpose other than the stress response. They believe that instead the new species is invading the host cells, detecting this rich environment and triggering filamentation in order to quickly infect more cells and access additional nutrients for their growth.
https://phys.org/news/2022-02-never-before-seen-bacteria-infect-cells.html