Pleomorphic Variants of (syn. ) Express Evolutionary Distinct Transcriptomes.

(syn. ) is a spirochete bacterium that causes tick-borne Lyme disease. Along its lifecycle develops several pleomorphic forms with unclear biological and medical relevance.

A novel time-lapse imaging method for studying developing bacterial biofilms.

In nature, bacteria prevailingly reside in the form of biofilms. These elaborately organized surface-bound assemblages of bacterial cells show numerous features of multicellular organization. We recently showed that biofilm growth is a true developmental process, which resembles developmental processes in multicellular eukaryotes.

Embryo-Like Features in Developing Bacillus subtilis Biofilms.

Correspondence between evolution and development has been discussed for more than two centuries. Recent work reveals that phylogeny-ontogeny correlations are indeed present in developmental transcriptomes of eukaryotic clades with complex multicellularity. Nevertheless, it has been largely ignored that the pervasive presence of phylogeny-ontogeny correlations is a hallmark of development in eukaryotes.