Everything about the Myxobacteria totally explained
The
myxobacteria ("
slime bacteria") are a group of
bacteria that predominantly live in the soil. The myxobacteria have very large
genomes, relative to other bacteria, for example 9-10 million
nucleotides.
Sorangium cellulosum has the largest known (as of 2008) bacterial genome, at 13.0 million
nucleotides. Myxobacteria are included among the
proteobacteria, a large group of
Gram-negative forms.
Myxobacteria can move actively by
gliding. They typically travel in
swarms (also known as
wolf packs), containing many
cells kept together by intercellular molecular
signals. This close concentration of cells may be necessary to provide a high concentration of extracellular
enzymes used to digest food. Myxobacteria produce a number of biomedically and industrially useful chemicals, such as
antibiotics, and export those chemicals outside of the cell.
Life cycle
When nutrients are scarce, myxobacterial cells aggregate into
fruiting bodies, a process long-thought to be mediated by
chemotaxis but now considered to be a function of a form of contact-mediated signaling.
, These fruiting bodies can take different shapes and colors, depending on the species. Within the fruiting bodies, cells begin as rod-shaped vegetative cells, and develop into rounded myxospores with thick cell walls. These myxospores, analogous to
spores in other organisms, are meant to survive until nutrients are more plentiful. The fruiting process is thought to benefit myxobacteria by ensuring that
cell growth is resumed with a group (swarm) of myxobacteria, rather than as isolated cells. Similar life cycles have developed among certain
amoebae, called cellular
slime moulds.
Clinical use
Metabolites secreted by
Sorangium cellulosum known as
epothilones have been noted to have
antineoplastic activity. This has led to the development of
analogs which mimic its activity. One such analog, known as
Ixabepilone is a US
FDA approved chemotherapy agent for the treatment of
metastatic breast cancer.
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