4.6 Article

Tunable phenotypic variability through an autoregulatory alternative sigma factor circuit

期刊

MOLECULAR SYSTEMS BIOLOGY
卷 17, 期 7, 页码 -

出版社

WILEY
DOI: 10.15252/msb.20209832

关键词

Bacillus subtilis; microbial systems biology; single-cell time-lapse microscopy; stochastic gene expression; stress priming

资金

  1. European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013)/ERC Grant [338060]
  2. Gatsby Foundation [GAT3272/GLC]
  3. European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant [721456]
  4. European Research Council (ERC) [338060] Funding Source: European Research Council (ERC)

向作者/读者索取更多资源

Genetically identical individuals in bacterial populations can exhibit significant phenotypic variability, which can be functionally adjusted through stress level, environmental history, and genetic perturbations. The alternative sigma factor sigma(V) circuit in Bacillus subtilis generates functional phenotypic variability that can be tuned by stress level, environmental history, and genetic perturbations. This tunability is explained by the autoregulatory feedback structure of the sigV operon.
Genetically identical individuals in bacterial populations can display significant phenotypic variability. This variability can be functional, for example by allowing a fraction of stress prepared cells to survive an otherwise lethal stress. The optimal fraction of stress prepared cells depends on environmental conditions. However, how bacterial populations modulate their level of phenotypic variability remains unclear. Here we show that the alternative sigma factor sigma(V) circuit in Bacillus subtilis generates functional phenotypic variability that can be tuned by stress level, environmental history and genetic perturbations. Using single-cell time-lapse microscopy and microfluidics, we find the fraction of cells that immediately activate sigma(V) under lysozyme stress depends on stress level and on a transcriptional memory of previous stress. Iteration between model and experiment reveals that this tunability can be explained by the autoregulatory feedback structure of the sigV operon. As predicted by the model, genetic perturbations to the operon also modulate the response variability. The conserved sigma-anti-sigma autoregulation motif is thus a simple mechanism for bacterial populations to modulate their heterogeneity based on their environment.

作者

我是这篇论文的作者
点击您的名字以认领此论文并将其添加到您的个人资料中。

评论

主要评分

4.6
评分不足

次要评分

新颖性
-
重要性
-
科学严谨性
-
评价这篇论文

推荐

暂无数据
暂无数据