title: Updates on the sporulation process in Clostridium species.
abstract: Sporulation is an important strategy for certain bacterial species within the phylum Firmicutes to survive longer periods of time in adverse conditions. All spore-forming bacteria have two phases in their life; the vegetative form, where they can maintain all metabolic activities and replicate to increase numbers, and the spore form, where no metabolic activities exist. Although many essential components of sporulation are conserved among the spore-forming bacteria, there are differences in the regulation and the pathways among different genera, even at the species level. While we have gained much information from the most studied spore-forming bacterial genus, Bacillus, we still lack an in-depth understanding of spore formation in the genus Clostridium. Clostridium and Bacillus share the master regulator of sporulation, Spo0A, and its downstream pathways, but there are differences in the activation of the Spo0A pathway. While Bacillus species use a multi-component phosphorylation pathway for phosphorylation of Spo0A, termed phosphorelay, such a phosphorelay system is absent in Clostridium. On the other hand, a number of genes regulated by the different sporulation-specific transcription factors are conserved between different Clostridium and Bacillus species. In this review, we discuss the recent findings on Clostridium sporulation and compare the sporulation mechanism in Clostridium and Bacillus.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine, College of Science, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA; Department of Microbiology, College of Science, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA.
authors.forename: Prabhat K
authors.initials: PK
authors.lastname: Talukdar
authors.affiliation: Laboratorio de Mecanismos de Patogénesis Bacteriana, Departamento de Ciencias Biológicas, Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, Universidad Andrés Bello, Santiago, Chile.
authors.forename: Valeria
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Olguín-Araneda
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine, College of Science, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA; Department of Microbiology, College of Science, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA.
authors.forename: Maryam
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Alnoman
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine, College of Science, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA; Laboratorio de Mecanismos de Patogénesis Bacteriana, Departamento de Ciencias Biológicas, Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, Universidad Andrés Bello, Santiago, Chile.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Paredes-Sabja
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine, College of Science, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA; Department of Microbiology, College of Science, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA. Electronic address: sarkerm@oregonstate.edu.
authors.forename: Mahfuzur R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Sarker
mesh_terms: D003013:Clostridium / Q000235:genetics* / Q000254:growth & development*; D015964:Gene Expression Regulation, Bacterial; D053263:Gene Regulatory Networks; D053858:Metabolic Networks and Pathways / Q000235:genetics; D013171:Spores, Bacterial / Q000235:genetics* / Q000254:growth & development*; D015533:Transcriptional Activation
keywords: Clostridium; Sigma factors; Spo0A; Spores; Sporulation