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Sporulation, bacterial cell envelopes and the origin of life.
- Source :
-
Nature reviews. Microbiology [Nat Rev Microbiol] 2016 Aug; Vol. 14 (8), pp. 535-542. Date of Electronic Publication: 2016 Jun 27. - Publication Year :
- 2016
-
Abstract
- Electron cryotomography (ECT) enables the 3D reconstruction of intact cells in a near-native state. Images produced by ECT have led to the proposal that an ancient sporulation-like event gave rise to the second membrane in diderm bacteria. Tomograms of sporulating monoderm and diderm bacterial cells show how sporulation can lead to the generation of diderm cells. Tomograms of Gram-negative and Gram-positive cell walls and purified sacculi suggest that they are more closely related than previously thought and support the hypothesis that they share a common origin. Mapping the distribution of cell envelope architectures onto a recent phylogenetic tree of life indicates that the diderm cell plan, and therefore the sporulation-like event that gave rise to it, must be very ancient. One explanation for this model is that during the cataclysmic transitions of the early Earth, cellular evolution may have gone through a bottleneck in which only spores survived, which implies that the last bacterial common ancestor was a spore.
- Subjects :
- Cell Membrane ultrastructure
Cell Wall ultrastructure
Gram-Negative Bacteria ultrastructure
Gram-Positive Bacteria ultrastructure
Peptidoglycan chemistry
Phylogeny
Spores, Bacterial ultrastructure
Biological Evolution
Cell Membrane chemistry
Cell Wall chemistry
Gram-Positive Bacteria physiology
Spores, Bacterial physiology
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 1740-1534
- Volume :
- 14
- Issue :
- 8
- Database :
- MEDLINE
- Journal :
- Nature reviews. Microbiology
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 28232669
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro.2016.85