Differentiation in Biofilm Communities
Recently biofilm researchers have become intrigued by evidence of
different, but seemingly coordinated, behaviors of individual cells
in single species biofilms, such as the "swarming" and "wall
forming" behaviors captured in the image at right and in the
video sequence attached.
In the late 1990s an investigation of the marine bacterium Pseudoalteromonas
at the single-cell level revealed two physiologically distinct
subpopulations of the organism on a chitin surface: one that
was chitinase active and
remained associated with the surface, and another that was non-chitinase active
and released daughter cells into the bulk aqueous phase.
At this point, researchers have more questions than answers about
their observations, but they hypothesize that biofilm populations
are capable of some degree of "division of behavior" that promotes
the survival of the whole. |
