Laboratoire de Chimie Bacte´rienne, CNRS UMR 7283, Aix-Marseille Universite´ , Institut de Microbiologie de la Me´diterrane´ e, Marseille, France Professor Tam Mignot
environment? Multicellular cooperation arises from cell-cell signalling and environment sensing and chemotaxis. The localization of a Myxococcus xanthus cytoplasmic receptor (Methyl-accepting Chemotaxis Protein, MCP) changes dynamically in response to cell contacts. This observation suggests that Myxococcus cells possess a “sense of touch” allowing cells to respond to the external environment by modulating coordinated cell movement. Myxococcus has a total of 21 MCP encoding genes. Some of them have been characterized genetically and biochemically. Similar to enteric bacteria, these receptors might be cross-linked with each other and form complex arrays ultimately generating sensory machineries. We are trying to characterize these sensory machineries and understand the link between the localization of bacterial chemoreceptors in cells and their function during chemotaxis
(2014.09.17)