Bacteria: Master Microbial Colonizers

Microbial Populations of Stony Meteorites: Substrate Controls on First Colonizers

Finding fresh, sterilized rocks provides ecologists with a clean slate to test ideas about first colonization and the evolution of soils de novo. Lava has been used previously in first colonizer studies due to the sterilizing heat required for its formation. However, fresh lava typically falls upon older volcanic successions of similar chemistry and modal mineral abundance. Given enough time, t...

Enrichment for enhanced competitive plant root tip colonizers selects for a new class of biocontrol bacteria.

Our group studies tomato foot and root rot, a plant disease caused by the fungus Forl (Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. radicis-lycopersici ). Several bacteria have been described to be able to control the disease, using different mechanisms. Here we describe a method that enables us to select, after application of a crude rhizobacterial mixture on a sterile seedling, those strains that reach the root ...

Identification of Rothia Bacteria as Gluten-Degrading Natural Colonizers of the Upper Gastro-Intestinal Tract

BACKGROUND Gluten proteins, prominent constituents of barley, wheat and rye, cause celiac disease in genetically predisposed subjects. Gluten is notoriously difficult to digest by mammalian proteolytic enzymes and the protease-resistant domains contain multiple immunogenic epitopes. The aim of this study was to identify novel sources of gluten-digesting microbial enzymes from the upper gastro-i...

Hybridization helps colonizers become conquerors.

Species colonizing new environments face an uphill battle to become established. Because colonizing populations are often small, opportunities for sexual reproduction may be limited by availability of mates or viable pollen—an example of an Allee effect (1, 2). The presence of amore abundant related species with similar climatic, habitat, and nutritional needs can further reduce the odds of col...

Counting viruses and bacteria in photosynthetic microbial