An endless world conflict is going on literally under your feet. Soil microbes have been fighting for territory and resources since the first prokaryotes began to populate a slightly cooled Earth. Somehow, they can identify friend from foe and react accordingly. A good example of this arms race can be found in ubiquitous soil bacteria called myxobacteria. These prokaryotes will form mushroom-like fruiting bodies (though almost microscopic) when nutrition is scarce. When found in nature on rotting vegetation, different species of myxobacteria fruiting bodies will form in segregated territories and not be intermingled. This suggests an ability to exclude other species which could include a recognition step, chemical warfare or both. In our lab, we are attempting to discover the mechanism of recognition and the genes and proteins involved during these strain interactions. So far, we have found that certain strains do have a competitive advantage when grown together in the same nutrients. Now we are trying to document if the ability to make fruiting bodies is enhanced in the dominant strain and figure out what genes are turned on or off when the two strains bump into each other in nature. This could be applied to important questions such as how the human immune system recognizes pathogens in your body or how your immune cells could recognize and target cancer cells for destruction.

An up-close image of stigmatella fruiting bodies.