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Staphylococcus aureus forms spreading dendrites that have characteristics of active motility
Staphylococcus aureus is historically regarded as a non-motile organism. More recently it has been shown that S. aureus can passively move across agar surfaces in a process called spreading. We re-analysed spreading motility using a modified assay and focused on observing the formation of dendrites:...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group
2015
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4683532/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26680153 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep17698 |
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author | Pollitt, Eric J. G. Crusz, Shanika A. Diggle, Stephen P. |
author_facet | Pollitt, Eric J. G. Crusz, Shanika A. Diggle, Stephen P. |
author_sort | Pollitt, Eric J. G. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Staphylococcus aureus is historically regarded as a non-motile organism. More recently it has been shown that S. aureus can passively move across agar surfaces in a process called spreading. We re-analysed spreading motility using a modified assay and focused on observing the formation of dendrites: branching structures that emerge from the central colony. We discovered that S. aureus can spread across the surface of media in structures that we term ‘comets’, which advance outwards and precede the formation of dendrites. We observed comets in a diverse selection of S. aureus isolates and they exhibit the following behaviours: (1) They consist of phenotypically distinct cores of cells that move forward and seed other S. aureus cells behind them forming a comet ‘tail’; (2) they move when other cells in the comet tail have stopped moving; (3) the comet core is held together by a matrix of slime; and (4) the comets etch trails in the agar as they move forwards. Comets are not consistent with spreading motility or other forms of passive motility. Comet behaviour does share many similarities with a form of active motility known as gliding. Our observations therefore suggest that S. aureus is actively motile under certain conditions. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4683532 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-46835322015-12-21 Staphylococcus aureus forms spreading dendrites that have characteristics of active motility Pollitt, Eric J. G. Crusz, Shanika A. Diggle, Stephen P. Sci Rep Article Staphylococcus aureus is historically regarded as a non-motile organism. More recently it has been shown that S. aureus can passively move across agar surfaces in a process called spreading. We re-analysed spreading motility using a modified assay and focused on observing the formation of dendrites: branching structures that emerge from the central colony. We discovered that S. aureus can spread across the surface of media in structures that we term ‘comets’, which advance outwards and precede the formation of dendrites. We observed comets in a diverse selection of S. aureus isolates and they exhibit the following behaviours: (1) They consist of phenotypically distinct cores of cells that move forward and seed other S. aureus cells behind them forming a comet ‘tail’; (2) they move when other cells in the comet tail have stopped moving; (3) the comet core is held together by a matrix of slime; and (4) the comets etch trails in the agar as they move forwards. Comets are not consistent with spreading motility or other forms of passive motility. Comet behaviour does share many similarities with a form of active motility known as gliding. Our observations therefore suggest that S. aureus is actively motile under certain conditions. Nature Publishing Group 2015-12-18 /pmc/articles/PMC4683532/ /pubmed/26680153 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep17698 Text en Copyright © 2015, Macmillan Publishers Limited http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
spellingShingle | Article Pollitt, Eric J. G. Crusz, Shanika A. Diggle, Stephen P. Staphylococcus aureus forms spreading dendrites that have characteristics of active motility |
title | Staphylococcus aureus forms spreading dendrites that have characteristics of active motility |
title_full | Staphylococcus aureus forms spreading dendrites that have characteristics of active motility |
title_fullStr | Staphylococcus aureus forms spreading dendrites that have characteristics of active motility |
title_full_unstemmed | Staphylococcus aureus forms spreading dendrites that have characteristics of active motility |
title_short | Staphylococcus aureus forms spreading dendrites that have characteristics of active motility |
title_sort | staphylococcus aureus forms spreading dendrites that have characteristics of active motility |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4683532/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26680153 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep17698 |
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