Bacterial species take on a wide variety of shapes, but the mechanisms by which specific shapes evolve have remained poorly understood. A recent study demonstrates that two Asticcacaulis species repurposed an ancestral regulatory protein to rewire the modules of stalk regulation, localization, and synthesis, thereby generating new shapes.
Christophe Ballif, Alessandro Francesco Aldo Virtuani, Andrew Wayne Fairbrother, Ebrar Özkalay