Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA (2018)

Bacteria have to communicate with one another in order to form a biofilm. And now, Calvin Lee and colleagues have found that they can spread information temporally too — influencing the surface-attachment properties across generations of cells.

Credit: Cultura Creative (RF) / Alamy Stock Photo

Pseudomonas aeruginosa (pictured) is a type of bacterium that attaches to surfaces via feedback between hair-like pili surrounding the cell and a signalling molecule that triggers pilus growth. Their first encounter with a surface is typically uneventful, with slim chances of attachment. But by tracking single cells and monitoring their family trees, Lee et al. found that once cells had seen one surface, they attached strongly to a virgin surface — and their progeny had a similar response.

The team showed that this adaptive state was associated with coupled oscillations of the signalling-molecule levels and pilus activity, which they described using a stochastic Turing model consistent with the surface-sensing framework. The results suggest that surface-sentient cells retain a memory of the surface that is sustained across their lineage — leading to rapid growth of the biofilm.