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bacterial cannibalism

traitmech:000626 · CLASS · PROPOSED

A predatory bacterial phenotype in which cells kill susceptible conspecific cells and obtain nutrients from the killed cells.

Trait evidence (3)

  • DOI:10.1126/science.1086462
    The sporulating cells feed on the nutrients thereby released, which allows them to keep growing rather than to complete morphogenesis.

    Gonzalez-Pastor et al. (2003), PMID:12817086, scientific abstract directly retrieved from Europe PMC. The author-posted main text at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/10699307_Cannibalism_by_Sporulating_Bacteria was also read. It reports sibling killing in the PY79 laboratory background, while the nutritional explanation is proposed from killing and sporulation phenotypes, not traced nutrient uptake. The snippet preserves the abstract's stronger wording without upgrading that inference. Actual figures and supplements were not inspected; no numerical or protein-resolved claim is imported.

  • DOI:10.1111/j.1365-2958.2009.06882.x
    Cannibal cells express the skf and sdp toxin systems to lyse a fraction of their sensitive siblings.

    Lopez et al. (2009), PMID:19775247, PMC2983100, scientific Summary, directly checked in NCBI BioC full text at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/research/bionlp/RESTful/pmcoa.cgi/BioC_xml/PMC2983100/unicode. Results, Discussion and Experimental Procedures were read. NCIB3610 is the wild-type background; prominent hypercannibal phenotypes concern engineered derivatives. Nutrient-mediated sporulation delay remains an interpretation, not a nutrient-flux measurement. Actual figures and supplements were not inspected.

  • DOI:10.1128/mbio.00525-26
    our data challenge the established role of cannibalism-dependent killing as the mechanism behind this sporulation delay.

    Friebel et al. (2026), PMID:42294941, PMC13343845.1, published 2026-06-15, IMPORTANCE section, not the scientific Abstract. Directly checked against Europe PMC full-text XML and https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13343845.1/. Results, Discussion and Methods were read; actual figures and supplements were not inspected. DK1042 is an NCIB3610-derived laboratory background. Biofilm differentiation and membrane-integrity readouts do not directly establish nutrient transfer. This is counterevidence to a universal killing-based explanation, not a new positive demonstration of the nutritional phenotype.

Provenance

Identifier source
TraitMech local identifier
Definition source
DOI:10.1126/science.1086462

Parent traits (1)

kg-microbe context

No kg-microbe node embedding matched this record in the 2026-04-25 deepwalk.

Discussions and Knowledge Gaps (2)

Open questions attached to this trait. Seeded by just knowledge-gap-scan and curated; see the corpus-wide index.

Distinguish nutritional cannibalism from broader developmental usage.

CURATION TODO OPEN bacterial-cannibalism-operational-scope · raised by codex · 2026-10-05

Not yet attached to a section of this record — a curator sets attaches_to (e.g. causal_graphs#some_edge) so the gap shows beside the mechanism it concerns.

This class retains the classical killing-and-feeding sense. Friebel et al. 2026 also calls the wider toxin-dependent biofilm differentiation program cannibalism; that usage need not satisfy this narrower nutritional definition. The predatory bacterium parent traitmech:000054 fits this operational scope, not every phenotype assigned that name in the literature. Bacteriocin production traitmech:000183 requires neither conspecific killing nor feeding. Saprotrophy traitmech:000055 does not require killing the food source; natural competence traitmech:000087 concerns DNA uptake. Fratricide, programmed cell death, biofilm formation and sporulation delay are not exact synonyms. Resolve broader terminology and external mappings before adding xrefs; do not assume species-level disjointness.

Resolve direct feeding evidence and strain provenance before exemplar curation.

KNOWLEDGE GAP OPEN bacterial-cannibalism-feeding-evidence · raised by codex · 2026-10-05

Not yet attached to a section of this record — a curator sets attaches_to (e.g. causal_graphs#some_edge) so the gap shows beside the mechanism it concerns.

The cited studies support the term and sibling-killing biology but do not justify treating every toxin-positive population as a demonstrated nutritional cannibal. Obtain direct conspecific nutrient-use evidence, inspect the supplements and verify natural strain provenance before adding canonical examples. Gene presence, expression, inhibition zones, membrane damage and delayed sporulation alone are insufficient. Do not infer a protein-resolved causal graph from toxin names or sequence profiles. Mechanistic edges, protein accessions and canonical taxa are deliberately deferred.

Curation history

  1. · MINTED_TRAITMECH_ID · codex

    Added bacterial cannibalism in the classical nutritional sense, with three DOI-backed snippets and explicit contrary evidence. Ignored-and-hidden novelty searches and current METPO review found no exact record. Reserved METPO:1057900 in v502, reusing the predatory bacterium parent. Deferred exemplars, mappings and mechanistic graphs pending direct feeding and provenance review.