Intercellular signaling during fruiting-body development of Myxococcus xanthus

The myxobacterium Myxococcus xanthus has a life cycle that is dominated by social behavior. During vegetative growth, cells prey on other bacteria in large groups that have been likened to wolf packs. When faced with starvati on, cells form a macroscopic fruiting body containing thousands of spores. The social systems that guide fruiting body development have been examined through the isolation of conditional developmental mutants that can be stim ulated to develop in the presence of wild-type cells. Extracellular complem entation is due to the transfer of soluble and cell contact-dependent inter cellular signals. This review describes the current state of knowledge conc erning cell-cell signaling during development.