Affiliation:
1. Indiana University, Department of Biology, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
Abstract
ABSTRACT
Bacillus subtilis
swims in liquid media and swarms over solid surfaces, and it encodes two sets of flagellar stator homologs. Here, we show that
B. subtilis
requires only the MotA/MotB stator during swarming motility and that the residues required for stator force generation are highly conserved from the
Proteobacteria
to the
Firmicutes
. We further find that mutants that abolish stator function also result in an overproduction of the extracellular polymer poly-γ-glutamate (PGA) to confer a mucoid colony phenotype. PGA overproduction appeared to be the result of an increase in the expression of the
pgs
operon that encodes genes for PGA synthesis. Transposon mutagenesis was conducted to identify insertions that abolished colony mucoidy and disruptions in known transcriptional regulators of PGA synthesis (Com and Deg two-component systems) as well as mutants defective in transcription-coupled DNA repair (Mfd)-reduced expression of the
pgs
operon. A final class of insertions disrupted proteins involved in the assembly of the flagellar filament (FliD, FliT, and FlgL), and these mutants did not reduce expression of the
pgs
operon, suggesting a second mechanism of PGA control.
Publisher
American Society for Microbiology
Subject
Molecular Biology,Microbiology
Cited by
54 articles.
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