Editorial: Prokaryotic communications: from macromolecular interdomain to intercellular talks (recognition) and beyond

Abstract

Communication is integral to all life on Earth. From complex microbial communities to the regulation of fundamental cellular processes such as DNA replication and transcription, intra- and inter-molecular communications, macromolecular cross-talks, and cell-cell communication lies at the heart of these processes. The concept of intercellular communication in the prokaryotic world came from discoveries made around 50 years ago when Tomasz reported that competence for natural transformation in Streptococcus pneumoniae requires a “hormone-like activator” that synchronize the bacterial population for entry into the competent state (Tomasz, 1965). Five years later in 1970, it was reported that the bioluminescent marine bacteria, Vibrio fischeri and Vibrio harveyi only produced light at high cell density but not when the bacterial cultures were diluted (Nealson et al., 1970). It took another 10 years or so before acyl-homoserine lactone (AHL) was identified as the component, termed the autoinducer, that was responsible for the stimulation of light production in the vibrios (Eberhard et al., 1981) and another 10–15 years before the concept of quorum sensing was firmly established along with its ever-growing lexicon of chemical languages as outlined in the seminal review by (Bassler and Losick, 2006). Besides quorum sensing, other forms of intercellular communications play important roles in microbial interactions. These include secretion systems such as the type VI secretion system (T6SS) that is central to predator-prey interactions (Cherrak et al., 2019), extracellular or membrane vesicles that transfer a multitude of biomolecules including DNA and RNA (Bose et al., 2021) and appendages such as conjugative pili that mediates the horizontal transfer of DNA through conjugation (Virolle et al., 2020). This Research Topic not only covers intercellular communication among bacteria but also the gamut of processes that govern intracellular communication within each bacterial cell.