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Microbial Symbiont Transmission: Basic Principles and Dark Sides

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Beneficial Microorganisms in Multicellular Life Forms

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Abstract

For a microbial association to persist throughout generations, host progeny must either be capable of earning a microbial fortune from the environment (horizontal transmission) or inherit it from its parents (vertical transmission). The former modality relies on highly sophisticated molecular mechanisms of partners’ recognition. The latter modality, instead, presupposes the microbial partners to be as deeply integrated into the host life cycle and to associate with its earliest developmental stages. Besides the common trends that just started to emerge, I discuss the under-explored aspects of bacterial transmission such as its cell biology, and how extracellular microbial symbionts – in turn – ensure their daughter cells the symbiotic lifestyle.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Monika Bright, Ulrich Dirks, Salvador Espada, Harald R. Gruber-Vodicka, Niels R. Heindl, Wolfgang Miller, and Joerg A. Ott for inspiring discussions. The author was supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) project P22470.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Genetics in Ecology, University of Vienna, Althanstrasse 14, 1090, Vienna, Austria

    Silvia Bulgheresi

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  1. Silvia Bulgheresi
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Correspondence to Silvia Bulgheresi .

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  1. , Dept. of Molecular Microbiology and Biot, University of Tel Aviv, Ramat Aviv, 69978, Israel

    Eugene Rosenberg

  2. , Dept. of Microbiology and Biotechnology, University of Tel Aviv, Ramat Aviv, 69978, Israel

    Uri Gophna

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Bulgheresi, S. (2012). Microbial Symbiont Transmission: Basic Principles and Dark Sides. In: Rosenberg, E., Gophna, U. (eds) Beneficial Microorganisms in Multicellular Life Forms. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21680-0_22

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