Integrating divergent behaviours within a bacterial population

Recent technological advances have allowed us to appreciate that isogenic populations of single cell bacteria are capable of controlling and integrating divergent behaviours within the population. This is often accomplished through a division of labour by the population: for example biofilm formation and swarming motility do not occur at the same time in the same cell. How this is accomplished at the molecular level is not understood in much detail but it is known to depend (in part) on selective activation and repression of key regulons at threshold levels of regulatory proteins. The project proposed here will investigate how the two component regulatory system (DegS-DegU) controls entry to the multicellular processes of biofilm formation and protease production in the Gram-positive bacterium Bacillus subtilis in response to a changing environmental signal. In particular the project will focus on the link between the active flagellum and DegU controlled multicellular processes. Advances in understanding processes such as these at the single cell level are applicable to other differentiation processes in bacteria including virulence and toxin production.