Bdellovibrio and like organisms: current understanding and knowledge gaps of the smallest cellular hunters of the microbial world

Abstract

Almost sixty years ago, Bdellovibrio and like organisms (BALOs) were discovered as the first obligate bacterial predators of other bacteria known to science. Since then, they were shown to be diverse and ubiquitous in the environment, and to bear astonishing ecological, physiological, and metabolic capabilities. The last decade has seen important strides made in understanding the mechanistic basis of their life cycle, the dynamics of their interactions with prey, along with significant developments towards their use in medicine, agriculture, and industry. This review details these achievements, identify current understanding and knowledge gaps to encourage and guide future BALO research.

Keywords:

• Bdellovibrio and like organisms
• obligate bacterial predator
• population balancer
• microbial bioagent
• predatory strategies

Acknowledgements

We warmly thank Prof. Edouard Jurkevitch for his precious feedback, corrections and remarks. We are grateful to Valérie Domien (Service des Systèmes d’Information et de Communication de la FR 3724, Observatoire Océanologique de Banyuls-sur-Mer) who helped to realise the Figures 3 and 4. This manuscript was edited for proper English language, grammar, punctuation, spelling, and overall style by one or more of the highly qualified native English speaking editors at AJE.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Jade Ezzedine was supported by a Ph.D. grant from INRAE and University Savoie Mont Blanc