ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2009
The physical state of water in bacterial spores.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 58 papers.
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Who cites it
58 citing papers in PubMed, 181 citations in OpenAlex.
- Standoff Time-Resolved SECARS on Ag-Decorated Silicon Nanowires.ACS photonics · 2026Article
- Dry versus wet dormancy: suspended lives ofmSystems · 2026Review
- Quasi-elastic neutron scattering studies on bacterial spores and their hydration water.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Advances in understanding the Clostridial spore inner membrane.Archives of microbiology · 2026Review
- Water Under Molecular Crowding: From Femtosecond H-Bond Networks Dynamics to Biological Function.Sub-cellular biochemistry · 2026Review
- Early activation of bioenergetic metabolism powers bacterial spore germination.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Molecular and Biophysical Perspectives on Dormancy Breaking: Lessons from Yeast Spore.Biomolecules · 2025Review
- Effects of Aqua-Glycerol Uptake Facilitator Protein GlpF on Spore Germination ofFoods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Life sets off a cascade of machines.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Bile acids as germinants for Clostridioides difficile spores, evidence of adaptation to the gut?FEMS microbiology reviews · 2025Review
- GerAB residues predicted to interfere with water passage based on steered molecular dynamics are key to germinosome functionality.Frontiers in microbiology · 2025Article
- Hypothesis: bacteria live on the edge of phase transitions with a cell cycle regulated by a water-clock.Theory in biosciences = Theorie in den Biowissenschaften · 2024Article
- Microbial life in slow and stopped lanes.Trends in microbiology · 2024Review
- Multifactorial resistance ofApplied and environmental microbiology · 2024Article
- Article
- Slow water dynamics in dehydrated human Jurkat T cells evaluated by dielectric spectroscopy with the Bruggeman-Hanai equation.RSC advances · 2023Article
- Hydration solids.Nature · 2023Article
- New Thoughts on an Old Topic: Secrets of Bacterial Spore Resistance Slowly Being Revealed.Microbiology and molecular biology reviews : MMBR · 2023Review
- Expression of the 2Duf protein in wild-type Bacillus subtilis spores stabilizes inner membrane proteins and increases spore resistance to wet heat and hydrogen peroxide.Journal of applied microbiology · 2023Article
- Standoff detection of bacterial spores by field deployable coherent Raman spectroscopy.Scientific reports · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The bacterial spore, the hardiest known life form, can survive in a metabolically dormant state for many years and can withstand high temperatures, radiation, and toxic chemicals. The molecular basis of spore dormancy and resistance is not understood, but the physical state of water in the different spore compartments is thought to play a key role. To characterize this water in situ, we recorded the water (2)H and (17)O spin relaxation rates in D(2)O-exchanged Bacillus subtilis spores over a wide frequency range. The data indicate high water mobility throughout the spore, comparable with binary protein-water systems at similar hydration levels. Even in the dense core, the average water rotational correlation time is only 50 ps. Spore dormancy therefore cannot be explained by glass-like quenching of molecular diffusion but may be linked to dehydration-induced conformational changes in key enzymes. The data demonstrate that most spore proteins are rotationally immobilized, which may contribute to heat resistance by preventing heat-denatured proteins from aggregating irreversibly. We also find that the water permeability of the inner membrane is at least 2 orders of magnitude lower than for model membranes, consistent with the reported high degree of lipid immobilization in this membrane and with its proposed role in spore resistance to chemicals that damage DNA. The quantitative results reported here on water mobility and transport provide important clues about the mechanism of spore dormancy and resistance, with relevance to food preservation, disease prevention, and astrobiology.
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