Claverys Jean-Pierre, Havarstein Leiv Sigve
Laboratoire de Microbiologie et Genetique Moleculaire, UMR 5100 CNRS-Universite Paul Sabatier, 118 route de Narbonne, 31062 Toulouse Cedex, France.
Front Biosci. 2002 Aug 1;7:d1798-814. doi: 10.2741/claverys.
Bacteria, which often are subjected to fluctuations in nutrients, temperature, radiation, pH, etc., adapt to the physico-chemical environment they live in by making the appropriate changes in their gene expression patterns. During the last decades it has become increasingly clear that bacteria, in addition, have a "social life", and that changes in gene expression can also be elicited by the presence of other bacteria. Traditionally bacteria have been viewed as solitary organisms that in general do not interact with other bacteria in a coordinated manner. Recent advances in the field of bacterial cell-to-cell communication has proved this to be a misconception, and mounting evidence now show that bacterial group behaviour is ubiquitous in nature. Competence for natural genetic transformation in Streptococcus pneumoniae, which has been studied for more than seventy years, has become a paradigm for intercellular communication and cell density dependent regulation of gene expression in Gram-positive bacteria. There has been rapid progress recently in elucidating the molecular mechanisms behind regulation of natural competence in S. pneumoniae. In this review, we describe the current status of our knowledge of natural competence in this bacterium, with particular emphasis on the early phase of competence induction.
细菌经常会受到营养物质、温度、辐射、pH值等因素的波动影响，它们通过改变基因表达模式来适应所生存的物理化学环境。在过去几十年里，越来越清楚的是，细菌除此之外还有“社交生活”，而且基因表达的变化也可由其他细菌的存在引发。传统上，细菌被视为一般不会以协调方式与其他细菌相互作用的独居生物体。细菌细胞间通讯领域的最新进展已证明这是一种误解，现在越来越多的证据表明细菌群体行为在自然界中无处不在。肺炎链球菌的自然遗传转化能力已被研究了七十多年，它已成为革兰氏阳性菌细胞间通讯和基因表达的细胞密度依赖性调控的一个范例。最近在阐明肺炎链球菌自然转化能力调控背后的分子机制方面取得了迅速进展。在这篇综述中，我们描述了我们对这种细菌自然转化能力的当前认识状况，特别强调了转化能力诱导的早期阶段。
