Abstract (Expand)
Bacteria are inherently social organisms whose actions should ideally be studied within an interactive ecological context. We show that the exchange and modification of natural products enables two … unrelated bacteria to defend themselves against a common predator. Amoebal predation is a major cause of death in soil bacteria and thus it exerts a trong selective pressure to evolve defensive strategies. A systematic analysis of binary combinations of coisolated bacteria revealed strains that were individually susceptible to predation but together killed their predator. This cooperative defense relies on a Pseudomonas species producing syringafactin, a lipopeptide, which induces the production of peptidases in a Paenibacillus strain. These peptidases then degrade the innocuous syringafactin into compounds, which kill the predator. A combination of bioprospecting, coculture experiments, genome modification, and transcriptomics unravel this novel natural product-based defense strategy.
Authors: Shuaibing Zhang, Ruchira Mukherji, Somak Chowdhury, Lisa Reimer, Pierre Stallforth
Date Published: 1st Feb 2021
Publication Type: Journal
PubMed ID: 33526668
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2013759118
Citation: Zhang S, Mukherji R, Chowdhury S, Reimer L, Stallforth P. Lipopeptide-mediated bacterial interaction enables cooperative predator defense. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2021 Feb 9;118(6).