Toward bacterial bioelectric signal transduction

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bioe.2021.0013.pdf(295.14 KB)
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Date
2021-06-16
Authors
Jones, Joshua M.
Larkin, Joseph W.
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Published version
OA Version
Citation
J. Jones, J. Larkin. 2021. "Toward Bacterial Bioelectric Signal Transduction." Bioelectricity, Volume 3, Issue 2, pp. 116 - 119. https://doi.org/10.1089/bioe.2021.0013
Abstract
Bacteria are electrically powered organisms; cells maintain an electrical potential across their plasma membrane as a source of free energy to drive essential processes. In recent years, however, bacterial membrane potential has been increasingly recognized as dynamic. Those dynamics have been implicated in diverse physiological functions and behaviors, including cell division and cell-to-cell signaling. In eukaryotic cells, such dynamics play major roles in coupling bioelectrical stimuli to changes in internal cell states. Neuroscientists and physiologists have established detailed molecular pathways that transduce eukaryotic membrane potential dynamics to physiological and gene expression responses. We are only just beginning to explore these intracellular responses to bioelectrical activity in bacteria. In this review, we summarize progress in this area, including evidence of gene expression responses to stimuli from electrodes and mechanically induced membrane potential spikes. We argue that the combination of provocative results, missing molecular detail, and emerging tools makes the investigation of bioelectrically induced long-term intracellular responses an important and rewarding effort in the future of microbiology.
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© Joshua M. Jones and Joseph W. Larkin, 2021; Published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. This Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License [CC-BY] ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.