All in the Family: Kin Contact Leads to Outer Membrane Exchange

The ability to recognize related cells in a population can confer evolutionary benefits. For example, some bacteria use contact-dependent inhibition proteins to distinguish kin from nonkin. Kinship recognition is taken to a new level in Myxococcus, which uses the dual-purpose TraA protein for kin recognition and outer membrane and lipoprotein exchange. In this issue of the Journal of Bacteriology, Wei et al. (X. Wei, C. N. Vassallo, D. T. Pathak, D. Wall, J. Bacteriol. 196:1807–1814, 2014) show that Tra-dependent exchange can be uncoupled from outer membrane vesicle/tube formation, reported elsewhere to mediate outer membrane exchange.