ArticleJournal of bacteriology2011
Myxococcus xanthus swarms are driven by growth and regulated by a pacemaker.
Article in Journal of bacteriology, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Swarming bacteria exhibit developmental phase transitions to establish scattered colonies in new regions.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- The Less Expensive Choice: Bacterial Strategies to Achieve Successful and Sustainable Reciprocal Interactions.Frontiers in microbiology · 2020Review
- Article
- Colony Expansion of Socially Motile Myxococcus xanthus Cells Is Driven by Growth, Motility, and Exopolysaccharide Production.PLoS computational biology · 2016Article
- Myxobacteria: Moving, Killing, Feeding, and Surviving Together.Frontiers in microbiology · 2016Review
- How Myxobacteria Cooperate.Journal of molecular biology · 2015Review
- The cognitive cell: bacterial behavior reconsidered.Frontiers in microbiology · 2015Review
- Cell division resets polarity and motility for the bacterium Myxococcus xanthus.Journal of bacteriology · 2014Article
- Transmission of a signal that synchronizes cell movements in swarms of Myxococcus xanthus.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2014Article
- Self-organization of bacterial biofilms is facilitated by extracellular DNA.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2013Article
- Are Myxobacteria intelligent?Frontiers in microbiology · 2013Article
- Chemosensory signaling controls motility and subcellular polarity in Myxococcus xanthus.Current opinion in microbiology · 2012Review
- Interconnected cavernous structure of bacterial fruiting bodies.PLoS computational biology · 2012Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The principal social activity of Myxococcus xanthus is to organize a dynamic multicellular structure, known as a swarm. Although its cell density is high, the swarm can grow and expand rapidly. Within the swarm, the individual rod-shaped cells are constantly moving, transiently interacting with one another, and independently reversing their gliding direction. Periodic reversal is, in fact, essential for creating a swarm, and the reversal frequency controls the rate of swarm expansion. Chemotaxis toward nutrient has been thought to drive swarming, but here the nature of swarm growth and the impact of genetic deletions of members of the Frz family of proteins suggest otherwise. We find that three cytoplasmic Frz proteins, FrzCD, FrzF, and FrzE, constitute a cyclic pathway that sets the reversal frequency. Within each cell these three proteins appear to be connected in a negative-feedback loop that produces oscillations whose frequencies are finely tuned by methylation and by phosphorylation. This oscillator, in turn, drives MglAB, a small G-protein switch, to oscillate between its GTP- and GDP-bound states that ultimately determine when the cell moves forward or backward. The periodic reversal of interacting rod-shaped cells promotes their alignment. Swarm organization ensures that each cell can move without blocking the movement of others.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.