The characteristic swarming behavior of the environmental bacterium Chromobacterium haemolyticum can be seen on an agar plate.

Comparison on blood agar: While the wild type of C. haemolyticum (right) shows a clear, bright hemolysis zone, the mutant lacking the gene cluster for the production of the jagaricins (left) lacks this zone.

🚨 New dual-use #Jagaricin function uncovered: it drives red blood cell destruction by C. haemolyticum, enabling infections while normally aiding survival via biofilms. A case of accidental virulence, as we show in #mBio. 🔎 doi.org/10.1128/mbio...
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