In microbial communities, bacteria chemically and physically interact with one another. Some of these interactions are mediated by secreted specialized metabolites that act as either intraspecies or interspecies signals to alter gene expression and to change cell physiology. Bacillus subtilis is a well-characterized soil microbe that can differentiate into multiple cell types, including metabol...

The effects of dietary supplementation with lysine-yielding Bacillus subtilis on gut morphology, cecal microflora, and expression of intestinal cytokine mRNA of Linwu ducks (a Chinese local domesticated duck) were investigated after a 63-d feeding trial. Two hundred forty 1-d-old female ducklings were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 dietary treatments, and there were 60 birds per treatment replicat...

Beneficial bacteria have been shown to affect host longevity, but the molecular mechanisms mediating such effects remain largely unclear. Here we show that formation of Bacillus subtilis biofilms increases Caenorhabditis elegans lifespan. Biofilm-proficient B. subtilis colonizes the C. elegans gut and extends worm lifespan more than biofilm-deficient isogenic strains. Two molecules produced by ...

Bacillus subtilis is currently used as an oral probiotic. We examined two commercial B. subtilis probiotic preparations, Enterogermina and Biosubtyl. Surprisingly, physiological and genetic characterization of the bacteria contained in each of these preparations has shown that neither contains B. subtilis.

Genome analyses have revealed that the genomes of non-photosynthetic bacteria including Bacillus subtilis code for proteins similar to the large subunit of RuBisCO (called RuBisCO-like protein (RLP)). This raises a fundamental question as to their functional relationship to photosynthetic RuBisCO. Recently, we identified the RLP of B. subtilis as the 2,3-diketo-5-methylthiopentyl-1-phosphate en...

Cells of undomesticated species of Bacillus subtilis frequently form complex colonies during spreading on agar surfaces. Given that menaquinone is involved in another form of coordinated behavior, namely, sporulation, we looked for a possible role for menaquinone in complex colony development (CCD) in the B. subtilis strain NCIB 3610. Here we show that inhibition of menaquinone biosynthesis in ...

The aim of this study was to assess the effect of alginate-chitosan microcapsule on viability characteristics of Bacillus subtilis and the ability of B. subtilis/alginate-chitosan microcapsule to remove uranium ion from aqueous solution. The effects of particle size, chitosan molecular weight and inoculum density on viability characteristics were studied using alginate-chitosan microcapsule-imm...

The conserved portion in bacterial ribosomal RNA was studied by the DNA-RNA hybridization method. The hybridization percentages were as follows: Bacillus subtilis DNA and B. subtilis 23S rRNA, 0.16; Escherichia coli DNA and E. coli 23S rRNA, 0.15; B. subtilis DNA and E. coli 23S rRNA, 0.03; E. coli DNA and B. subtilis 23S rRNA, 0.04. The RNA's extracted from the heterologous hybrids could be re...

Bacillus subtilis and some of its close relatives have a long history of industrial and biotechnological applications. Search for antigen expression systems based on recombinant B. subtilis strains sounds attractive both by the extensive genetic knowledge and the lack of an outer membrane, which simplify the secretion and purification of heterologous proteins. More recently, genetically modifie...

The gene encoding extracellular xylanase (xynA) was amplified as a 770 bp DNA fragment from Bacillus subtilis 168 chromosomal DNA by PCR. The genes encoding endo-beta-1,4-glucanase (eglS) and endo-beta-1,3-1,4-glucanase (bglS) were isolated from a genomic library of B. subtilis 168. The sequences of xynA and eglS were identical to those of the xylanase and cellulase genes from B. subtilis PAP11...