Predation by Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus transforms the landscape and community assembly of bacterial biofilms

Abstract

The predatory bacterium Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus follows a life cycle in which it attaches to the exterior of a Gram-negative prey cell, enters the periplasm, and harvests resources to replicate before lysing the host to find new prey. Predatory bacteria such as this are common in many natural environments, as are groups of matrix-bound clusters of prey cells, termed biofilms. Despite the ubiquity of both predatory bacteria and biofilm-dwelling prey, the interaction between B. bacteriovorus and prey cells inside biofilms has received little attention and has not yet been studied at the micrometer scale. Filling this knowledge is critical to understanding the nature of predator-prey interaction in nature. Here we show that B. bacteriovorus is able to prey upon biofilms of the pathogen Vibrio cholerae, but only up until a critical maturation threshold past which the prey biofilms are protected from their predators. We determine the contribution of matrix secretion and cell-cell packing of the prey biofilm toward this protection mechanism. Our results demonstrate that B. bacteriovorus predation in the context of this protection threshold fundamentally transforms the sub-millimeter scale landscape of biofilm growth, as well as the process of community assembly as new potential biofilm residents enter the system.