Heterogeneity in Bacterial Specialized Metabolism

Abstract

Specialized metabolites (SMs) like typical antibiotics, signaling molecules or other bioactive compounds of bacterial origin (sometimes also used in human therapy) are often complex natural products that are costly for the cell to make. Several bacterial taxa are known to produce multiple SM classes in parallel and therefore a division of labor within a clonal population of bacteria might be beneficial. In this review, examples of SM of gram-negative and gram-positive bacterial taxa that are produced by different cell types are presented, and the possibility that such a heterogeneity is more widespread in SM biosynthesis is discussed. In addition, tools to study SM production at the single cell level are presented.

Keywords: bacterial communication; natural product; phenotypic heterogeneity; quorum sensing; secondary metabolism.