期刊名称:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN:0027-8424
电子版ISSN:1091-6490
出版年度:1998
卷号:95
期号:20
页码:11957-11962
DOI:10.1073/pnas.95.20.11957
语种:English
出版社:The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要:Myxococcus xanthus cells exhibit directed motility up phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) gradients, and we suggest that PE behaves as a chemoattractant. Computer-assisted stop-motion digital microscopy was used to record cell movements in slide culture. PE decreased cellular reversal frequency with molecular specificity that was correlated with the fatty acid composition. Synthetic dilauroyl (di C12:0) PE and dioleoyl (di C18:1 {omega}9c) PE suppressed direction reversals and stimulated movement up the gradient. Sensory adaptation occurred about 1 hr after the onset of stimulation. Null mutants in a methylated chemotaxis protein homolog (FrzCD) and a CheA/CheY homolog (FrzE) moved up a PE gradient at a reduced rate. The mutants displayed normal excitation but were defective in adaptation. A dominant, hyper-reversal mutant in the M. xanthus methyl accepting chemotaxis protein homolog, frzCD224, failed to respond to PE stimulation, which argued that PE was a transduced stimulus. Neither dilauroyl PE nor dioleoyl PE is present at high enough concentrations in vegetative or developmental PE to account for all of the chemotactic activity. It appears then that there are additional, as yet unknown, PE species that serve as autoattractants. We report on a discrete phospholipid chemoattractant in a gliding bacterium