FIG 4.

Factors and pathways involved M. xanthus predation. Our transposon mutagenesis screen identified 2 two-component systems, the Dif chemosensory system (left) and the Hsf system (right), that are involved in regulating predation. Each system utilizes a histidine kinase (blue) that becomes autophosphorylated upon activation to regulate outputs via response regulators. Upon activation, phosphoryl groups are transferred to response regulators (orange) to generate the physiological responses, such as EPS production, motility, and specialized metabolite production. Additionally, we found an ABC transporter/permease and the specialized metabolite myxoprincomide to be involved in the predation of B. subtilis NCIB3610. HTH, helix-turn-helix.