Vibrio fischeri are bioluminescent marine bacteria that can be isolated from their symbiotic animal partners or from ocean water. A V. fischeri population increases exponentially inside the light organ of the Hawaiian bobtail squid (Euprymna scolopes) while the host is quiescent during the day. This bacterial light organ population reaches stationary phase and then remains high during the night...

Molecular species delimitation assists taxonomic decisions for challenging species, like cryptic complexes. Bobtail squids (Family Sepiolidae Leach, 1817) are a very diverse group of benthic and nektonic small to medium size cephalopods with many questions solve. In this study we provided new sequence data 12 out 17 Mediterranean bobtail squid including all the genera present i n area. Other re...

Vibrio fischeri exists in a symbiotic relationship with the Hawaiian bobtail squid, Euprymna scolopes, where the squid provides a home for the bacteria, and the bacteria in turn provide camouflage that helps protect the squid from night-time predators. Like other gram-negative organisms, V. fischeri expresses lipopolysaccharide (LPS) on its cell surface. The structure of the O-antigen and the c...

Female members of many cephalopod species house a bacterial consortium in the accessory nidamental gland (ANG), part of the reproductive system. These bacteria are deposited into eggs that are then laid in the environment where they must develop unprotected from predation, pathogens, and fouling. In this study, we characterized the genome and secondary metabolite production of Leisingera sp. JC...

The beneficial symbiosis between the Hawaiian bobtail squid, Euprymna scolopes, and the bioluminescent bacterium, Vibrio fischeri, provides a unique opportunity to study host/microbe interactions within a natural microenvironment. Colonization of the squid light organ by V. fischeri begins a lifelong association with a regulated daily rhythm. Each morning the host expels an exudate from the lig...

Vibrio fischeri is a bioluminescent bacterium that enters into a symbiosis with the bobtail squid Euprymna scolopes. The bacterium colonizes a specialized light organ, in which it generates light that might help the squid to hide its silhouette from animals beneath it. Previous studies have shown that the host nitric oxide (NO) synthase is active during colonization, suggesting that V. fischeri...

Studies concerning the role of the immune system in mediating molecular signaling between beneficial bacteria and their hosts have, in recent years, made significant contributions to our understanding of the co-evolution of eukaryotes with their microbiota. The symbiotic association between the Hawaiian bobtail squid, Euprymna scolopes and the bioluminescent bacterium Vibrio fischeri has been u...

The GacS/GacA two-component system regulates the expression of bacterial traits during host association. Although the importance of GacS/GacA as a regulator of virulence is well established, its role in benign associations is not clear, as mutations in either the gacS or gacA gene have little impact on the success of colonization in nonpathogenic associations studied thus far. Using as a model ...

This study reports the first description and molecular characterization of naturally occurring, non-bioluminescent strains of Vibrio fischeri. These 'dark' V. fischeri strains remained non-bioluminescent even after treatment with both autoinducer and aldehyde, substrate additions that typically maximize light production in dim strains of luminous bacteria. Surprisingly, the entire lux locus (ei...

I n this issue of PLoS Medicine, Rosen and colleagues [1] present convincing evidence that intracellular communities of Escherichia coli commonly exist and are likely of to be of clinical significance in uncomplicated bacterial cystitis. This novel finding is remarkable in many respects, not the least of which is the circuitous route by which our understanding about bacterial communities has ev...