Prevalence of Autoplaque Phenomenon in Bacterial Communities from Spatially Heterogeneous Environment of an Abandoned Mine

The autoplaquephenomenon has been intriguing microbiologists for more than five decades (Berk, 1963; Krylov et al., 2016). The autoplaquephenomenon is characterized by the spontaneous appearance of plaques on the bacterial lawn without exposure to any external phage. Though, autolysis has been thoroughly investigated in Pseudomonas aeruginosa (Berk and Kazanas, 1963; Shaburova et al., 2001) it has also been described in several bacteria genera, such as Bacillus cereus (McCloy, 1958), B. subtilis (Loessner et al., 1997), Brucella abortus (Renoux and Suire, 1963), Fibrobacter succinogenes (Singh et al., 2003), Myxococcus xanthus (Wireman and Dworkin, 1977; Breyen and Dworkin, 1984), Neisseria gonorrhoeae (Campbell et al., 1985), Nodularia spumigena (Jenkins and Hayes, 2006) and Rhizobium trifolii (Barnet and Vincent, 1969).