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Cellular Adjustments of Bacillus subtilis and Other Bacilli to Fluctuating Salinities

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Halophiles and Hypersaline Environments

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Abstract

The soil-dwelling bacterium Bacillus subtilis inhabits an ecological niche subjected to frequent changes in osmotic and saline conditions that are caused by rainfall and desiccation. Such changes elicit water fluxes across the cytoplasmic membrane and can drive up turgor under hypo-osmotic conditions to such an extent that the cell will rupture, or under hyper-osmotic conditions, cause the dehydration of the cytoplasm, a reduction in turgor and eventually growth arrest and cell death. Proteome and genome-wide transcriptional profiling studies have highlighted the complexity and multifaceted nature of the osmotic stress response systems of B. subtilis. However, it is beyond doubt that effective water management by the cell is the cornerstone of its acclimatization to either sudden or sustained rises in the environmental osmolarity and the osmotic downshift that inevitably will follow hyperosmotic growth conditions. The accumulation and expulsion of ions and compatible solutes play key roles in these cellular osmotic adjustment processes.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to extend our special thanks to Tamara Hoffmann for intensive discussions on the “ins and outs” of osmotic stress responses of Bacilli. We thank our colleagues Lutz Schmitt and Sander H. J. Smits (University of Düsseldorf; Germany) and Michael Hecker and Uwe Völker (University of Greifswald; Germany) for very fruitful collaborations on the structural analysis of microbial binding proteins for compatible solutes and on the proteomic and transcriptomic assessment of osmotically stressed B. subtilis cells, respectively. We are very grateful to Vickie Koogle for the carefully editing of the manuscript and thank Tamara Hoffmann and Nadine Stöveken for critically reading of drafts of this book chapter.

Financial support for our studies on osmoregulation in microorganisms and the synthesis and uptake of compatible solutes were generously provided by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the Fonds der Chemischen Industrie, the LOEWE program of the State of Hessen via the Centre for Synthetic Microbiology [SynMicro; Marburg] and by a grant from the BMBF via the Bacell-SysMo2 consortium.

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  1. Department of Biology, Laboratory for Microbiology, Philipps-University Marburg, Karl-von-Frisch-Strasse 8, 35032, Marburg, Germany

    Marco Pittelkow & Erhard Bremer

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  1. Faculty of Pharmacy, Department of Microbiology, University of Sevilla, Profesor García González 2, Sevilla, 41012, Spain

    Antonio Ventosa

  2. The Institute of Life Sciences, Department of Plant and Environmental Sc, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 91904, Israel

    Aharon Oren

  3. , Insitute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beichen West Road 1, Beijing, China, People's Republic

    Yanhe Ma

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Pittelkow, M., Bremer, E. (2011). Cellular Adjustments of Bacillus subtilis and Other Bacilli to Fluctuating Salinities. In: Ventosa, A., Oren, A., Ma, Y. (eds) Halophiles and Hypersaline Environments. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20198-1_15

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