Water and Cations Flux During Sporulation and Germination.

Bacterial spore water uptake and solute permeability are hypothesised to play a central role during the sporulation and germination processes but the leading mechanisms are at now poorly understood. In this chapter, a state of the art and the last experiments to better study this topic are presented. In the first part, major questions are addressed to the role of water content in spore dormancy and resistance, to the mechanisms which lead to spore dehydration and to the permeability of the spore layers to water and solutes. In the second part, the attention is focused on the ion composition of spores and their importance for the spore life cycle, with particular attention to the leading mechanisms acting during spore formation in the mother cell and during the germination process and outgrowth.