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Cargo Transport Shapes the Spatial Organization of a Microbial Community

View ORCID ProfileAbhishek Shrivastava, Visha K. Patel, Yisha Tang, Susan Connolly Yost, Floyd E. Dewhirst, Howard C. Berg
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/318600
Abhishek Shrivastava
Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.The Forsyth Institute, Cambridge, MA, USA.The Rowland Institute at Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA.
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Visha K. Patel
Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
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Yisha Tang
Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
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Susan Connolly Yost
The Forsyth Institute, Cambridge, MA, USA.
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Floyd E. Dewhirst
The Forsyth Institute, Cambridge, MA, USA.
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Howard C. Berg
Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.The Rowland Institute at Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA.
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Abstract

The human microbiome is an assemblage of diverse bacteria that interact with one another to design a community. Bacteria that form a community are arranged in a three-dimensional matrix with many degrees of freedom. Snapshots of microbial communities display well-defined structures but how a non-ordered community reaches an ordered state is not clear. Bacterial gliding is defined as the motion of cells in a screw-like fashion over an external surface. Genomic analysis suggests that gliding bacteria are abundant in human microbial communities. Gliding bacteria require a functional bacterial Type IX Secretion System, and a motility machinery that propels the mobile cell-surface adhesin SprB. Here we report that cells of abundant non-motile bacteria found in human oral microbial communities attach to single gliding bacterial cells via SprB. The attached non-motile bacteria are propelled as ‘cargo’ along the length of a gliding cell. Multi-color fluorescent spectral imaging of live bacterial cells within a polymicrobial community shows long-range transport of non-motile cargo bacteria by a moving swarm. Tracking of fluorescently labeled single cells and of fluid flow patterns via gas bubbles suggests hierarchy within a swarm. We find that the synchronized public transport of cargo bacteria provides a specific spatial structure to a polymicrobial community, and that some non-motile bacteria use public transport more efficiently than other members of their community.

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Posted May 10, 2018.
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Cargo Transport Shapes the Spatial Organization of a Microbial Community
Abhishek Shrivastava, Visha K. Patel, Yisha Tang, Susan Connolly Yost, Floyd E. Dewhirst, Howard C. Berg
bioRxiv 318600; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/318600
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Cargo Transport Shapes the Spatial Organization of a Microbial Community
Abhishek Shrivastava, Visha K. Patel, Yisha Tang, Susan Connolly Yost, Floyd E. Dewhirst, Howard C. Berg
bioRxiv 318600; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/318600

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