Caulobacter crescentus

Caulobacter crescentus is a gram-negative, oligotrophic bacterium widely distributed in aquatic environments. It plays an importante role in the carbon cycle.

It is an important model to cellular differentiation and one of its most perceptible characteristics is that its two child-cells are very different from each other, one being mobile and the other fixed. The mobile one has a flagellum and swims until it finds a favorable environment, at which point it loses its flagellum and develops a new structure that lets the cell fix itself to a substrate.

The optimal temperature to the growth of Caulobacter is around 30°C and its generational period is 2.5 hours.