CMCB Life Sciences Seminar: Thorsten Mascher, TUD, Faculty of Biology

Title: “Bacterial Multicellularity: Emergent Functions of Microbial Tissue”

Host: Federico Calegari (CRTD)

Abstract:

The development of multicellularity is a major evolutionary transition and a prerequisite for the occurrence of higher life forms on Earth. While multicellularity originated in prokaryotes dating back over 3.5 billion years, our current understanding of multicellularity is still largely based on studying eukaryotic systems. In contrast, microbes are still perceived as archetypically unicellular. Recent technological advances now allow resolving macroscopic bacterial communities (cm range) in time and space at single-cell level (µm range). These approaches open a completely new perspective on microbial life beyond the individual cell, with crucial relevance for understanding the ecology, physiology, genomics, and molecular mechanisms of multicellularity and microbial tissue formation. Ultimately, the resulting knowledge shall allow deriving a unified picture on the evolution of tissue formation, which will bridge the outdated prokaryote-to-eukaryote divide.

Review articles:

1: Popp PF, Mascher T. Coordinated Cell Death in Isogenic Bacterial Populations: Sacrificing Some for the Benefit of Many? J Mol Biol. 2019 Nov 22;431(23):4656-4669. doi: 10.1016/j.jmb.2019.04.024. Epub 2019 Apr 25. PMID:31029705.

2: Radeck J, Fritz G, Mascher T. The cell envelope stress response of Bacillus subtilis: from static signaling devices to dynamic regulatory network. Curr Genet. 2017 Feb;63(1):79-90. doi: 10.1007/s00294-016-0624-0. Epub 2016 Jun 25. PMID: 27344142.

3: Pinto D, Mascher T. (Actino)Bacterial "intelligence": using comparative genomics to unravel the information processing capacities of microbes. Curr Genet. 2016 Aug;62(3):487-98. doi: 10.1007/s00294-016-0569-3. Epub 2016 Feb 6. PMID: 26852121.

4: Mascher T. Bacterial (intramembrane-sensing) histidine kinases: signal transfer rather than stimulus perception. Trends Microbiol. 2014 Oct;22(10):559-65. doi: 10.1016/j.tim.2014.05.006. Epub 2014 Jun 16. PMID: 24947190.

5: Mascher T. Signaling diversity and evolution of extracytoplasmic function (ECF) σ factors. Curr Opin Microbiol. 2013 Apr;16(2):148-55. doi: 10.1016/j.mib.2013.02.001. PMID: 23466210.

Everybody is very welcome.