The first issue to get settled is that the shape of a bacterium has biological relevance. Portions of this topic have also been discussed by Beveridge, Dusenbery, Koch, and Mitchell. More depth, more examples, and a bit more quantitative treatment can be found in a recent review and the references therein. I will highlight a few research areas that bear on why bacteria have certain morphologies, but only in a brief and qualitative way. What has not been as well explored is why bacteria find it advantageous to exhibit such a prodigious number of different shapes and so the purpose of this article is to examine some of the reasons that lie behind this variety. And, indeed, this approach has produced exciting new information, highlighted by other articles in this issue. This emphasis is understandable because we are both more familiar with and more comfortable with answering how-type questions. The expectation is that by answering this (deceptively) simple question we may acquire knowledge that will point us to a universal mechanism of shape control. The discussion of bacterial morphology has been dominated by questions about how a cell manages to create a rod shape, which, of course, is but one example of the more general question of how a cell constructs any shape.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |