ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2018
In vitro single-cell dissection revealing the interior structure of cable bacteria.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 63 citations in OpenAlex.
- Charge Injection and Interfiber Electrical Conduction in Cable Bacteria.ACS applied materials & interfaces · 2026Article
- Artificial sediments enable reproducible cultivation and recapitulate ecological interactions of cable bacteria.ISME communications · 2026Article
- A novel cable bacteria species with a distinct morphology and genomic potential.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- Comparison of cable bacteria genera reveals details of their conduction machinery.EMBO reports · 2025Article
- Multidisciplinary methodologies used in the study of cable bacteria.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2025Review
- Cable Bacteria and Their Biotechnological Application.Advances in biochemical engineering/biotechnology · 2025Review
- Temperature-Dependent Characterization of Long-Range Conduction in Conductive Protein Fibers of Cable Bacteria.ACS nano · 2024Article
- Electrogenic sulfur oxidation mediated by cable bacteria and its ecological effects.Environmental science and ecotechnology · 2024Review
- Living electronics: A catalogue of engineered living electronic components.Microbial biotechnology · 2023Review
- Microbial succession in a marine sediment: Inferring interspecific microbial interactions with marine cable bacteria.Environmental microbiology · 2022Article
- The dynamics of cable bacteria colonization in surface sediments: a 2D view.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Long-distance electron transfer in a filamentous Gram-positive bacterium.Nature communications · 2021Article
- Oxygen consumption of individual cable bacteria.Science advances · 2021Article
- Editorial: Material Surfaces and Interfaces at the Nanoscale: From Theory to Application.Frontiers in chemistry · 2021Article
- Exploration of Microbial Factories for Synthesis of Nanoparticles - A Sustainable Approach for Bioremediation of Environmental Contaminants.Frontiers in microbiology · 2021Review
- Cell Cycle, Filament Growth and Synchronized Cell Division in Multicellular Cable Bacteria.Frontiers in microbiology · 2021Article
- How Microbes Use Force To Control Adhesion.Journal of bacteriology · 2020Review
- On the evolution and physiology of cable bacteria.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
- A highly conductive fibre network enables centimetre-scale electron transport in multicellular cable bacteria.Nature communications · 2019Article
- The rhizosphere of aquatic plants is a habitat for cable bacteria.FEMS microbiology ecology · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors at 6 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Filamentous Desulfobulbaceae bacteria were recently discovered as long-range transporters of electrons from sulfide to oxygen in marine sediments. The long-range electron transfer through these cable bacteria has created considerable interests, but it has also raised many questions, such as what structural basis will be required to enable micrometer-sized cells to build into centimeter-long continuous filaments? Here we dissected cable bacteria cells in vitro by atomic force microscopy and further explored the interior, which is normally hidden behind the outer membrane. Using nanoscale topographical and mechanical maps, different types of bacterial cell-cell junctions and strings along the cable length were identified. More important, these strings were found to be continuous along the bacterial cells passing through the cell-cell junctions. This indicates that the strings serve an important function in maintaining integrity of individual cable bacteria cells as a united filament. Furthermore, ridges in the outer membrane are found to envelop the individual strings at cell-cell junctions, and they are proposed to strengthen the junctions. Finally, we propose a model for the division and growth of the cable bacteria, which illustrate the possible structural requirements for the formation of centimeter-length filaments in the recently discovered cable bacteria.
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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.