Sporulation is an important cellular response to stress that is also significant from a bioreactor operation viewpoint. While sporulating organisms are known to show an enhanced sporulation response under several stress situations, the sporulation response to shear stress has not been investigated thus far. Such a study could be of interest since shear stress, to a greater or lesser degree, is always present in bioreactor operation. In this article, we investigate the sporulation extents of the Gram-positive bacteria Bacillus subtilis at various defined shear levels. We show that, contrary to expectations, shear inhibits sporulation. We found an inverse correlation between the shear rate-dependent specific intracellular reactive oxygen species level (siROS), and the sporulation extent. A 10-fold increase in siROS resulted in about 17-fold decrease in sporulation extent. The involvement of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in sporulation was unknown thus far. Further, through experiments that specifically increased and reduced intracellular ROS (iROS), we established that siROS is responsible for the inhibition of sporulation under shear stress. In addition, we found that shear induced siROS regulated the expression levels of the general stress proteins Ctc and sigma(B). Based on the above, we hypothesize that siROS may regulate suppression of sporulation under high shear by altering sigma(B) and Ctc expression levels, and a model for the same is presented.
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