title: Recruitment in the sea: bacterial genes required for inducing larval settlement in a polychaete worm.
abstract: Metamorphically competent larvae of the marine tubeworm Hydroides elegans can be induced to metamorphose by biofilms of the bacterium Pseudoalteromonas luteoviolacea strain HI1. Mutational analysis was used to identify four genes that are necessary for metamorphic induction and encode functions that may be related to cell adhesion and bacterial secretion systems. No major differences in biofilm characteristics, such as biofilm cell density, thickness, biomass and EPS biomass, were seen between biofilms composed of P. luteoviolacea (HI1) and mutants lacking one of the four genes. The analysis indicates that factors other than those relating to physical characteristics of biofilms are critical to the inductive capacity of P. luteoviolacea (HI1), and that essential inductive molecular components are missing in the non-inductive deletion-mutant strains.
authors.affiliation: Kewalo Marine Lab, University of Hawaii at Manoa.
authors.forename: Ying
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Sean
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Callahan
authors.forename: Michael G
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Hadfield
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D018441:Biofilms; D015139:Blotting, Southern; D017931:DNA Primers; D005798:Genes, Bacterial; D007814:Larva / Q000382:microbiology*; D008386:Marine Biology; D009154:Mutation; D016366:Open Reading Frames; D011077:Polychaeta / Q000254:growth & development / Q000382:microbiology*; D031161:Pseudoalteromonas / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology*; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction
chemical_list: D017931:DNA Primers