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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Mass suicide documented in bacteria

Microbes pump out acid until they burst.
Bacterial pattern in a petri dish

Colonies of one species of Paenibacillus bacterium crank up the acidity of their environment so much that they eventually burst. Credit: Clouds Hill Imaging Ltd/SPL

Some bacteria trigger their own destruction by making their environment uninhabitable, a process that researchers have named ‘ecological suicide’.

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Nature 556, 410 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-04742-9

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