Architecture and Assembly of the Bacillus subtilis Spore Coat.

摘要

In this study, atomic force microscopy was used to probe the coat structure of Bacillus subtilis wild-type and cotA, cotB, safA, cotH, cotO, cotE, gerE and cotE gerE spores. This approach provided high-resolution visualization of the various coat structures, new insight into the function of specific coat proteins, enabled the development of a detailed model of spore coat architecture, and identified several spore coat layers that have not previously been observed. This work also provided evidence that the spores' inner coat is crystalline, with its apparent two-dimensional (2D) nuclei being the first example of a non-mineral 2D crystallization pattern in a biological organism.