Scientists Discover Radio-Like Communication in Ancient Bacteria

Scitech Daily ^ | December 09, 2024 | University of Cambridge

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Cyanobacteria use an AM radio-like mechanism to regulate their genes, with the cell division cycle acting as a “carrier wave” and their circadian clock modulating the pulse strength to integrate signals from these two rhythms. This discovery explains how cells coordinate these oscillatory processes and may have applications in biotechnology and synthetic biology. Credit: SciTechDaily.com Cyanobacteria use an AM radio-like principle to coordinate cell division with circadian rhythms, encoding information through pulse amplitude modulation.

Cyanobacteria, an ancient group of photosynthetic bacteria, have been discovered to regulate their genes using the same physics principle used in AM radio transmission.

New research published in Current Biology has found that cyanobacteria use variations in the amplitude (strength) of a pulse to convey information in single cells. The finding sheds light on how biological rhythms work together to regulate cellular processes.

In AM (amplitude modulation) radio, a wave with constant strength and frequency – called a carrier wave – is generated from the oscillation of an electric current. The audio signal, which contains the information (such as music or speech) to transmit, is superimposed onto the carrier wave. This is done by varying the amplitude of the carrier wave in accordance with the frequency of the audio signal.

The research team, led by Professor James Locke at the Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University (SLCU) and Dr Bruno Martins at the University of Warwick found that a similar AM radio-like mechanism is at work in cyanobacteria.

In cyanobacteria, the cell division cycle, the process through which one cell grows and divides into two new cells, acts as the ‘carrier signal’. The modulating signal then comes from the bacteria’s 24-hour circadian clock, which acts as an internal time-keeping mechanism.

Solving a Long-Standing Cellular Puzzle

This finding answers a long-standing question in cell biology – how do cells integrate signals from two oscillatory processes – the cell cycle and the circadian rhythm – which operate a different frequencies? Until now, it was unclear how these two cycles could be coordinated.

How the Cyanobacterial Circadian Clock Couples to Pulsatile Processes

Ye et al. report on pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) in cyanobacterial gene regulation, analogous to AM radio. The circadian clock regulates the pulsing amplitude of a sigma factor, creating a circadian pattern despite non-circadian pulsing. This coupling links the clock to the cell cycle, suggesting PAM as a broader mechanism in biological clocks. Credit: Graphic by Chao Le

To solve the puzzle, the research team used single-cell time-lapse microscopy and mathematical modeling. With the time-lapse microscopy, they tracked expression of a protein, the alternative sigma factor RpoD4. RPoD4 plays an important role in the initiation of transcription, which is the process by which genetic information from DNA is transcribed into RNA. The modeling allowed researchers to explore signal processing mechanisms, comparing modeling results with microscopy data. The team found RpoD4 is turned on in pulses that occur only at cell division, which made it an ideal candidate for tracking.

Lead author Dr Chao Ye explained:

“We found that the circadian clock dictates how strong these pulses are over time. Using this strategy, cells can encode information about two oscillatory signals in the same output: information about the cell cycle in the pulsing frequency, and about the 24-hour clock in the pulsing strength. This is the first time we’ve observed a circadian clock using pulse amplitude modulation, a concept typically associated with communication technology, to control biological functions.”

Implications of the Findings

“Varying the frequency of either the cell cycle, through ambient light, or the circadian clock, through genetic mutations, validated the underlying principle. It is striking to see examples in nature of what we sometimes think of as ‘our’ engineering rules,” said co-corresponding author Dr Martins. “The cyanobacterial lineage evolved 2.7 billion years ago, and have an elegant solution to this information processing problem.”

Professor Locke added: “One reason we study cyanobacteria is that they have the simplest circadian clock of any organism, so understanding it lays the foundation we need to understand clocks in more complex organisms, like people and crops.

“These principles could have broader implications in synthetic biology and biotechnology. For example, this could help us develop crops that are more resilient to changing environmental conditions, with implications for agriculture and sustainability.”

Reference:

“The cyanobacterial circadian clock couples to pulsatile processes using pulse amplitude modulation”

by Chao Ye, Chris N. Micklem, Teresa Saez, Arijit K. Das, Bruno M.C. Martins and James C.W. Locke, 25 November 2024, Current Biology.

DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.10.047

This research was funded by BBSRC, ERC, the Gatsby Charitable Foundation and the Royal Society.

[kelly4c]

Thanks for sharing that :)

My question is, well there are hundreds, put one of them is where exactly is He now?

[sopo]

That’s why these bacteria are so primitive, the could have upgraded to FM after the first 20,000 divisions or so.

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