Bacterial glycocalyx integrity drives multicellular swarm biofilm dynamism
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Exopolysaccharide (EPS) layers on the bacterial cell surface are key determinants of biofilm establishment and maintenance, leading to the formation of higher-order 3D structures that confer numerous survival benefits to a cell community. In addition to a specific cell-associated EPS glycocalyx, we recently revealed that the social δ-proteobacterium Myxococcus xanthus secretes a novel biosurfactant polysaccharide (BPS) to the extracellular milieu. Together, secretion of the two polymers (EPS and BPS) is required for type IV pilus (T4P)-dependent swarm expansion via spatio-specific biofilm expression profiles. Thus the synergy between EPS and BPS secretion somehow modulates the multicellular lifecycle of M. xanthus. Herein, we demonstrate that BPS secretion functionally alters the EPS glycocalyx via destabilization of the latter, fundamentally changing the characteristics of the cell surface. This impacts motility behaviors at the single-cell level and the aggregative capacity of cells in groups via cell-surface EPS fibril formation as well as T4P production, stability, and positioning. These changes modulate the structure of swarm biofilms via cell layering, likely contributing to the formation of internal swarm polysaccharide architecture. Together, these data reveal the manner by which the combined secretion of two distinct polymers induces single-cell changes that modulate swarm biofilm communities.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".