1.A.1.13.4
The Biofilm-inducing putative K⁺ channel, BikC or YugO (Prindle et al. 2015). BikC has an N-terminal 2 TMS + P-loop channel domain and a C-terminal NADB_Rossman superfamily domain (TrkA domain). YugO is in a two cistronic operon where Mistic (MstX; 9.A.66; Debnath et al., 2011; Roosild et al., 2005) is encoded by the gene that precedes yugO. Both play a role in biofilm formation, probably by functioning together (Lundberg et al. 2013; Marino et al. 2015). These K⁺ channels in bacterial biofilms provide an active, long-range electrical signalling for cellular communities (Prindle et al. 2015).  Metabolic co-dependency gives rise to collective electrical oscillations in biofilms (Liu et al. 2015). This oscillatory electrical signalling, due to periodic release of K⁺, giving rise to K⁺ gradients, increasing as swimming cells approach the biofilm that generates the gradiens, allows cells of the same and different speices to find and then incorporate themselves into existing biofilms (Humphries et al. 2017).