Even though there is a large body of information concerning the harmful effects of alcohol on different organisms, the mechanism(s) that affects developmental programs, at a single-cell level, has not been clearly identified. In this respect, the spore-forming bacterium Bacillus subtilis constitutes an excellent model to study universal questions of cell fate, cell differentiation, and morphogenesis. Here, we demonstrate that treatment with subinhibitory concentrations of alcohol that did not affect vegetative growth inhibited the initiation of spore development through a selective blockage of key developmental genes under the control of the master transcription factor Spo0A approximately P.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSpore development and stress resistance in Bacillus subtilis are governed by the master transcription factors Spo0A and sigma(B), respectively. Here we show that the coding genes for both regulatory proteins are dramatically induced, during logarithmic growth, after a temperature downshift from 37 to 20 degrees C. The loss of sigma(B) reduces the stationary-phase viability of cold-adapted cells 10- to 50-fold.
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