Dealing with stress the bacterial way

It’s a stressful life for bacteria. Bacillus subtilis commonly lives in soil, where it’s under daily attack from heat, acid and salts in the soil. Scientists have been using Diamond to understand how the bacterial cells respond quickly to rapidly changing environments to survive. This research has been published in the journal Science.

Central to this survival mechanism is the stressosome – the "crisis command centre" of the bacterial cell. If a cell senses danger – for example an increase in temperature or acidity – it will generate a warning signal. Commonly several signals will come in at once, and it is the job of the stressosome to integrate these signals and generate a single global response.

The researchers used Diamond to determine the structure of a key subunit of the complex, one that is responsible for triggering the cascade that enables the cells to survive.

Molecular Architecture of the 'Stressosome,' a Signal Integration and Transduction Hub, Jon Marles-Wright, Tim Grant, Olivier Delumeau, Gijs van Duinen, Susan J. Firbank, Peter J. Lewis, James W. Murray, Joseph A. Newman, Maureen B. Quin, Paul R. Race, Alexis Rohou, Willem Tichelaar, Marin van Heel, and Richard J. Lewis, Science 322, 92 (2008)
DOI: science.1159572
3 October 2008