ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2008
Bet-hedging and epigenetic inheritance in bacterial cell development.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 209 papers.
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Who cites it
209 citing papers in PubMed.
- A metabolite morphogen coordinates multicellular development inScience advances · 2026Article
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- A single DNA methylation site regulates cell fate during Clostridioides difficile sporulation.PLoS pathogens · 2026Article
- Population-scale chemical response revealed by a barcoded yeast collection.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Growth-dependent sensory bet-hedging enhances collective navigation.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Bet-hedging via Kelly betting in a limited environment leads to logistic growth in the Game of Fitness.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Challenging the fitness cost: expression of the cryptic E. coli bgl operon lacks a measurable growth disadvantage in exponential phase.Archives of microbiology · 2026Article
- Genomic perplexity and the evolution of context-dependent function.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Beyond Resistance: Phenotypic Plasticity in Bacterial Responses to Antibiotics, Oxidative Stress and Antimicrobial Photodynamic Inactivation.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Lives in a gram of soil: linking life cycle biology to soil ecology.The ISME journal · 2026Review
- Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2026Review
- Dissecting the role ofFrontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Cell-to-Cell and Patient-to-Patient Variability in Antimicrobial Resistance.Microorganisms · 2025Review
- An agent-based model of metabolic signaling oscillations in Bacillus subtilis biofilms.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Exploring the concept of bacterial memory.Nature microbiology · 2025Review
- To Sporulate or Not to Sporulate: Developmental Checkpoints MonitoringAnnual review of microbiology · 2025Review
- Real-time nanoscale investigation of spore coat assembly in Bacillus subtilis.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Bacteriophage-driven microbial phenotypic heterogeneity: ecological and biogeochemical importance.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2025Review
- Induced tolerance to UV stress drives survival heterogeneity in isogenicbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Phosphorelay changes and plasticity underlie the life history evolution ofMicrobiology (Reading, England) · 2025Article
149 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Upon nutritional limitation, the bacterium Bacillus subtilis has the capability to enter the irreversible process of sporulation. This developmental process is bistable, and only a subpopulation of cells actually differentiates into endospores. Why a cell decides to sporulate or not to do so is poorly understood. Here, through the use of time-lapse microscopy, we follow the growth, division, and differentiation of individual cells to identify elements of cell history and ancestry that could affect this decision process. These analyses show that during microcolony development, B. subtilis uses a bet-hedging strategy whereby some cells sporulate while others use alternative metabolites to continue growth, providing the latter subpopulation with a reproductive advantage. We demonstrate that B. subtilis is subject to aging. Nevertheless, the age of the cell plays no role in the decision of its fate. However, the physiological state of the cell's ancestor (more than two generations removed) does affect the outcome of cellular differentiation. We show that this epigenetic inheritance is based on positive feedback within the sporulation phosphorelay. The extended intergenerational "memory" caused by this autostimulatory network may be important for the development of multicellular structures such as fruiting bodies and biofilms.
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