there isnt any role, as thats not much of use. But they interferre and also accumulate in ridges, and causes uneven spatial folds in bioflm. Thus growth rate has to be evenly studied
I tend to disagree. The function of dead cells in biofilms is that they are the source of a lot of extracellular DNA, which is present in the "slime" of the biofilm. There are autolytic, programmed cell-death-like, mechanisms involved, for instance the autolysin AtlE in Staphylococcus biofilms etc.
In addition, the role of dead cells in "biofilms" of S. coelicolor is as a source of nutrients for differentiating cells; they produce antibiotics to protect this secret stash. I believe this is a much more general mechanisms that would allow biofilms in depleted environments to regain/recycle nutrients and differentiate to better withstand the changing conditions.
Plenty of roles to investigate further I would say...
Dear Dr Bastiaan Krom Thanks for valuable comments. would you like to suggest some publications on this topic.
I am agree with Bastiaan Krom. I believe it is depending on the species how and why the cell death contribute for the the survival of the whole community. I suggest this article: Signals, Regulatory Networks, and Materials That Build and Break
Bacterial Biofilms (Ece Karatan1* and Paula Watnick2). At least this have a nice part dealing with the cell death and the dispersal and may help to find more easy other article related to this topic
Life after death: the critical role of extracellular DNA in microbial. is a good new publication discussing this topic.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Life+after+death%3A+the+critical+role+of+extracellular+DNA+in+microbial+.
- Badges
- Science method