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Multicellular behavior in bacteria: communication, cooperation, competition and cheating
Author(s) -
Dunny Gary M.,
Brickman Timothy J.,
Dworkin Martin
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
bioessays
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.175
H-Index - 184
eISSN - 1521-1878
pISSN - 0265-9247
DOI - 10.1002/bies.20740
Subject(s) - multicellular organism , cheating , biology , context (archaeology) , quorum sensing , sociobiology , myxobacteria , bacteria , microbiology and biotechnology , ecology , biofilm , evolutionary biology , genetics , cell , paleontology
The sociobiology of bacteria, largely unappreciated and ignored by the microbiology research community two decades ago is now a major research area, catalyzed to a significant degree by studies of communication and cooperative behavior among the myxobacteria and in quorum sensing (QS) and biofilm formation by pseudomonads and other microbes. Recently, the topic of multicellular cooperative behaviors among bacteria has been increasingly considered in the context of evolutionary biology. Here we discuss the significance of two recent studies1,2 of the phenomenon of “cheating” mutants and their exploitation of cooperating microbial populations of Pseudomonas aeruginosa . BioEssays 30:296–298, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.