Physiology, molecular biology and applications of the bacterial starvation response.
Physiology, molecular biology and applications of the bacterial starvation response.
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DOI：
10.1111/j.1365-2672.1992.tb03624.x
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发表时间：
1992-12
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
A. Matin
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
A. Matin
Starvation is likely to be the common lot of bacteria in nature. The amount of dissolved organic matter in the oceans is between 0.4 and 0.8 mg carbon/l, and most of this is not biodegradable (Morita 1988). According to recent studies, bacterial biomass production in marine and estuarine environments is limited not only by grazing but also by substrate concentration; in the upper estuary in particular substrate concentration was the limiting factor and the growth rates were probably close to zero (Coffin & Sharp 1987). High-nutrient niches do exist, for example on sur-faces and particles where nutrients adsorb, or within animal hosts but, according to the ‘spinning wheel aggregate’hypothesis of Goldman (1984), such existence probably alternates with long periods of planktonic existence with little or no growth due to nutrient deprivation. The mean generation time of a deep sea bacterium was estimated to be 210 d (Carlucci & Williams 1978) and similar low growth rates have been reported in other environments; starvation may be responsible for inducing the virulence apparatus in certain pathogenic bacteria (Matin et al. 1989). Starvation fails to induce dormant, resistant structures such as endospores in a vast majority of bacteria. Although such bacteria have traditionally been considered nondifferentiating as regards starvation, it has become increasingly clear that they activate complex molecular regulatory
