scholarly journals Cell Shape and Population Migration Are Distinct Steps ofProteus mirabilisSwarming That Are Decoupled on High-Percentage Agar

2019 ◽  
Vol 201 (11) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin Little ◽  
Jacob Austerman ◽  
Jenny Zheng ◽  
Karine A. Gibbs

ABSTRACTSwarming on rigid surfaces requires movement of cells as individuals and as a group of cells. For the bacteriumProteus mirabilis, an individual cell can respond to a rigid surface by elongating and migrating over micrometer-scale distances. Cells can form groups of transiently aligned cells, and the collective population is capable of migrating over centimeter-scale distances. To address howP. mirabilispopulations swarm on rigid surfaces, we asked whether cell elongation and single-cell motility are coupled to population migration. We first measured the relationship between agar concentration (a proxy for surface rigidity), single-cell phenotypes, and swarm colony phenotypes. We find that cell elongation and single-cell motility are coupled with population migration on low-percentage hard agar (1% to 2.5%) and become decoupled on high-percentage hard agar (>2.5%). Next, we evaluate how disruptions in lipopolysaccharide (LPS), specifically the O-antigen components, affect responses to hard agar. We find that LPS is not essential for elongation and motility of individual cells, as predicted, and instead functions to broaden the range of agar concentrations on which cell elongation and motility are coupled with population migration. These findings demonstrate that cell elongation and motility are coupled with population migration under a permissive range of surface conditions; increasing agar concentration is sufficient to decouple these behaviors. Since swarm colonies cover greater distances when these steps are coupled than when they are not, these findings suggest that collective interactions amongP. mirabiliscells might be emerging as a colony expands outwards on rigid surfaces.IMPORTANCEHow surfaces influence cell size, cell-cell interactions, and population migration for robust swarmers likeP. mirabilisis not fully understood. Here, we have elucidated how cells change length along a spectrum of sizes that positively correlates with increases in agar concentration, regardless of population migration. Single-cell phenotypes can be decoupled from collective population migration simply by increasing agar concentration. A cell’s lipopolysaccharides function to broaden the range of agar conditions under which cell elongation and single-cell motility remain coupled with population migration. In eukaryotes, the physical environment, such as a surface matrix, can impact cell development, shape, and migration. These findings support the idea that rigid surfaces similarly act on swarming bacteria to impact cell shape, single-cell motility, and collective population migration.

2019 ◽  
Vol 201 (19) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chinedu S. Madukoma ◽  
Peixian Liang ◽  
Aleksandar Dimkovikj ◽  
Jianxu Chen ◽  
Shaun W. Lee ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Pseudomonas aeruginosa is among the many bacteria that swarm, where groups of cells coordinate to move over surfaces. It has been challenging to determine the behavior of single cells within these high-cell-density swarms. To track individual cells within P. aeruginosa swarms, we imaged a fluorescently labeled subset of the larger population. Single cells at the advancing swarm edge varied in their motility dynamics as a function of time. From these data, we delineated four phases of early swarming prior to the formation of the tendril fractals characteristic of P. aeruginosa swarming by collectively considering both micro- and macroscale data. We determined that the period of greatest single-cell motility does not coincide with the period of greatest collective swarm expansion. We also noted that flagellar, rhamnolipid, and type IV pilus motility mutants exhibit substantially less single-cell motility than the wild type. IMPORTANCE Numerous bacteria exhibit coordinated swarming motion over surfaces. It is often challenging to assess the behavior of single cells within swarming communities due to the limitations of identifying, tracking, and analyzing the traits of swarming cells over time. Here, we show that the behavior of Pseudomonas aeruginosa swarming cells can vary substantially in the earliest phases of swarming. This is important to establish that dynamic behaviors should not be assumed to be constant over long periods when predicting and simulating the actions of swarming bacteria.


1984 ◽  
Vol 99 (3) ◽  
pp. 1151-1155 ◽  
Author(s):  
B Varnum ◽  
D R Soll

The motility of individual, aggregation-competent amebae of Dictyostelium has been analyzed at different concentrations of cAMP under both nongradient and gradient conditions. The following is demonstrated: (a) concentrations of cAMP greater than 10(-8) M inhibit motility in a concentration-dependent fashion, decrease the frequency but not the degree of turning, and cause rounding in cell shape; (b) no concentration of cAMP stimulates motility, or positive chemokinesis; (c) concentrations of cAMP that stimulate a maximal chemotactic response do not affect motility and concentrations of cAMP that maximally inhibit motility do not stimulate chemotaxis under gradient conditions; and (d) the concentrations of cAMP that inhibit motility are identical under gradient and nongradient conditions.


2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Pushkarsky ◽  
Yunbo Liu ◽  
Westbrook Weaver ◽  
Ting-Wei Su ◽  
Onur Mudanyali ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rongqun Guo ◽  
Mengdie Lü ◽  
Fujiao Cao ◽  
Guanghua Wu ◽  
Fengcai Gao ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Knowledge of immune cell phenotypes, function, and developmental trajectory in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) microenvironment is essential for understanding mechanisms of evading immune surveillance and immunotherapy response of targeting special microenvironment components. Methods Using a single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) dataset, we analyzed the immune cell phenotypes, function, and developmental trajectory of bone marrow (BM) samples from 16 AML patients and 4 healthy donors, but not AML blasts. Results We observed a significant difference between normal and AML BM immune cells. Here, we defined the diversity of dendritic cells (DC) and macrophages in different AML patients. We also identified several unique immune cell types including T helper cell 17 (TH17)-like intermediate population, cytotoxic CD4+ T subset, T cell: erythrocyte complexes, activated regulatory T cells (Treg), and CD8+ memory-like subset. Emerging AML cells remodels the BM immune microenvironment powerfully, leads to immunosuppression by accumulating exhausted/dysfunctional immune effectors, expending immune-activated types, and promoting the formation of suppressive subsets. Conclusion Our results provide a comprehensive AML BM immune cell census, which can help to select pinpoint targeted drug and predict efficacy of immunotherapy.


2011 ◽  
Vol 31 (6) ◽  
pp. 835-846 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. A. De Melo Reis ◽  
C. S. Schitine ◽  
A. Kofalvi ◽  
S. Grade ◽  
L. Cortes ◽  
...  

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inge M. N. Wortel ◽  
Ioana Niculescu ◽  
P. Martijn Kolijn ◽  
Nir Gov ◽  
Rob J. de Boer ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTCell migration is astoundingly diverse. Molecular signatures, cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions, and environmental structures each play their part in shaping cell motion, yielding numerous different cell morphologies and migration modes. Nevertheless, in recent years, a simple unifying law was found to describe cell migration across many different cell types and contexts: faster cells turn less frequently. Given this universal coupling between speed and persistence (UCSP), from a modelling perspective it is important to know whether computational models of cell migration capture this speed-persistence link. Here, we present an in-depth characterisation of an existing Cellular Potts Model (CPM). We first show that this model robustly reproduces the UCSP without having been designed for this task. Instead, we show that this fundamental law of migration emerges spontaneously through a crosstalk of intracellular mechanisms, cell shape, and environmental constraints, resembling the dynamic nature of cell migration in vivo. Our model also reveals how cell shape dynamics can further constrain cell motility by limiting both the speed and persistence a cell can reach, and how a rigid environment such as the skin can restrict cell motility even further. Our results further validate the CPM as a model of cell migration, and shed new light on the speed-persistence coupling that has emerged as a fundamental property of migrating cells.SIGNIFICANCEThe universal coupling between speed and persistence (UCSP) is the first general quantitative law describing motility patterns across the versatile spectrum of migrating cells. Here, we show – for the first time – that this migration law emerges spontaneously in an existing, highly popular computational model of cell migration. Studying the UCSP in entirely different model frameworks, not explicitly built with this law in mind, can help uncover how intracellular dynamics, cell shape, and environment interact to produce the diverse motility patterns observed in migrating cells.


2021 ◽  
Vol 87 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katsuya Fuchino ◽  
Helena Chan ◽  
Ling Chin Hwang ◽  
Per Bruheim

ABSTRACT The alphaproteobacterium Zymomonas mobilis exhibits extreme ethanologenic physiology, making this species a promising biofuel producer. Numerous studies have investigated its biology relevant to industrial applications and mostly at the population level. However, the organization of single cells in this industrially important polyploid species has been largely uncharacterized. In the present study, we characterized basic cellular behavior of Z. mobilis strain Zm6 under anaerobic conditions at the single-cell level. We observed that growing Z. mobilis cells often divided at a nonmidcell position, which contributed to variant cell size at birth. However, the cell size variance was regulated by a modulation of cell cycle span, mediated by a correlation of bacterial tubulin homologue FtsZ ring accumulation with cell growth. The Z. mobilis culture also exhibited heterogeneous cellular DNA content among individual cells, which might have been caused by asynchronous replication of chromosome that was not coordinated with cell growth. Furthermore, slightly angled divisions might have resulted in temporary curvatures of attached Z. mobilis cells. Overall, the present study uncovers a novel bacterial cell organization in Z. mobilis. IMPORTANCE With increasing environmental concerns about the use of fossil fuels, development of a sustainable biofuel production platform has been attracting significant public attention. Ethanologenic Z. mobilis species are endowed with an efficient ethanol fermentation capacity that surpasses, in several respects, that of baker’s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), the most-used microorganism for ethanol production. For development of a Z. mobilis culture-based biorefinery, an investigation of its uncharacterized cell biology is important, because bacterial cellular organization and metabolism are closely associated with each other in a single cell compartment. In addition, the current work demonstrates that the polyploid bacterium Z. mobilis exhibits a distinctive mode of bacterial cell organization, likely reflecting its unique metabolism that does not prioritize incorporation of nutrients for cell growth. Thus, another significant result of this work is to advance our general understanding in the diversity of bacterial cell architecture.


2019 ◽  
Vol 85 (18) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yutaka Yawata ◽  
Tatsunori Kiyokawa ◽  
Yuhki Kawamura ◽  
Tomohiro Hirayama ◽  
Kyosuke Takabe ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Here we analyzed the innate fluorescence signature of the single microbial cell, within both clonal and mixed populations of microorganisms. We found that even very similarly shaped cells differ noticeably in their autofluorescence features and that the innate fluorescence signatures change dynamically with growth phases. We demonstrated that machine learning models can be trained with a data set of single-cell innate fluorescence signatures to annotate cells according to their phenotypes and physiological status, for example, distinguishing a wild-type Aspergillus nidulans cell from its nitrogen metabolism mutant counterpart and log-phase cells from stationary-phase cells of Pseudomonas putida. We developed a minimally invasive method (confocal reflection microscopy-assisted single-cell innate fluorescence [CRIF] analysis) to optically extract and catalog the innate cellular fluorescence signatures of each of the individual live microbial cells in a three-dimensional space. This technique represents a step forward from traditional techniques which analyze the innate fluorescence signatures at the population level and necessitate a clonal culture. Since the fluorescence signature is an innate property of a cell, our technique allows the prediction of the types or physiological status of intact and tag-free single cells, within a cell population distributed in a three-dimensional space. Our study presents a blueprint for a streamlined cell analysis where one can directly assess the potential phenotype of each single cell in a heterogenous population by its autofluorescence signature under a microscope, without cell tagging. IMPORTANCE A cell’s innate fluorescence signature is an assemblage of fluorescence signals emitted by diverse biomolecules within a cell. It is known that the innate fluoresce signature reflects various cellular properties and physiological statuses; thus, they can serve as a rich source of information in cell characterization as well as cell identification. However, conventional techniques focus on the analysis of the innate fluorescence signatures at the population level but not at the single-cell level and thus necessitate a clonal culture. In the present study, we developed a technique to analyze the innate fluorescence signature of a single microbial cell. Using this novel method, we found that even very similarly shaped cells differ noticeably in their autofluorescence features, and the innate fluorescence signature changes dynamically with growth phases. We also demonstrated that the different cell types can be classified accurately within a mixed population under a microscope at the resolution of a single cell, depending solely on the innate fluorescence signature information. We suggest that single-cell autofluoresce signature analysis is a promising tool to directly assess the taxonomic or physiological heterogeneity within a microbial population, without cell tagging.


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