Bacillus subtilis as a Model for Bacterial Systems Biology

Abstract

Bacillus subtilis has been the subject of intense study for nearly six decades. Initially, the key drivers were: (i) the need of the food industry for a nonpathogenic model bacterium to study the characteristics of endospores, and (ii) the observation, in 1959, that B. subtilis strain 168 could be genetically manipulated by transformation. In the intervening period, B. subtilis 168 has become second only to Escherichia coli K-12 in terms of the detail with which aspects of its genetic, biochemistry and physiology is understood. For the foreseeable future, B. subtilis represents an eminently tractable model in which to integrate knowledge gained from the reductionist approach to biology towards an understanding of how this bacterium functions as a unitary system. This will require the application of various ‘omics’ (e.g. genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics), the increased application of high-throughput technologies and system modelling. The ultimate aim of an in silico model of B. subtilis is that it can accurately mimic or predict its behaviour in the environment.