Rylee K Hackley, Sungmin Hwang, Jake T Herb, Preeti Bhanap, Katie Lam, Angie Vreugdenhil, Cynthia L Darnell, Mar Martinez Pastor, Johnathan H Martin, Julie A Maupin-Furlow, Amy K Schmid
Microbial cells must continually adapt their physiology in the face of changing environmental conditions. Archaea living in extreme conditions, such as saturated salinity, represent important examples of such resilience. The model salt-loving organism Haloferax volcanii exhibits remarkable plasticity in its morphology, biofilm formation, and motility in response to variations in nutrients and cell density. However, the mechanisms regulating these lifestyle transitions remain unclear. In prior research, we showed that the transcriptional regulator, TrmB, maintains the rod shape in the related species Halobacterium salinarum by activating the expression of enzyme-coding genes in the gluconeogenesis metabolic pathway...
January 11, 2024: Molecular Microbiology