Wang Ziyan, Zeng Lingbin, Hu Shouxian, Hu Qianyu, Zhang Yuzhen, Liu Jintao
Center for Infection Biology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
Tsinghua-Peking Center for Life Sciences, Beijing, China.
Nat Chem Biol. 2025 Jun;21(6):867-875. doi: 10.1038/s41589-024-01796-x. Epub 2025 Jan 2.
Colony expansion is important for establishing territories. It is unclear to what extent bacteria can maintain colony expansion under nutrient limitation. Here, we found that Escherichia coli biofilms could maintain steady expansion for an extended period of time under severe phosphorus limitation. The expansion was supported by reactive-oxygen-species-mediated cell death within the biofilm. The cell death was spatially separated from the region of growth, resulting in cross-regional recycling of phosphorus from the lysed bacteria. The increase in cell death and the steady growth after phosphorus removal was community specific and was not observed in planktonic bacteria. Lastly, phosphorus had a unique role in the cell-death-mediated nutrient recycling, as the phenomenon described above was not observed under carbon or nitrogen starvation. Our work reveals how bacterial communities use spatially coordinated metabolism to cope with phosphorus limitation, which promotes robust expansion of the bacteria in fluctuating environments.
菌落扩张对于建立领地很重要。目前尚不清楚细菌在营养限制下能在多大程度上维持菌落扩张。在这里，我们发现大肠杆菌生物膜在严重的磷限制下能够长时间维持稳定的扩张。这种扩张是由生物膜内活性氧介导的细胞死亡所支持的。细胞死亡在空间上与生长区域分离，导致溶解细菌中的磷进行跨区域循环利用。细胞死亡的增加以及去除磷后的稳定生长具有群落特异性，在浮游细菌中未观察到。最后，磷在细胞死亡介导的营养物质循环中具有独特作用，因为在碳或氮饥饿条件下未观察到上述现象。我们的工作揭示了细菌群落如何利用空间协调的代谢来应对磷限制，这促进了细菌在波动环境中的强劲扩张。
