Blow up a long balloon and two things happen: it gets longer and it gets wider. Now imagine a living cell that inflates itself under enormous pressure and yet only grows longer, never adding width.

Bacillus subtilis has emerged as a pre‐eminent model organism for the study and application of protein expression and secretion, owing to its robust secretory pathways and genetic tractability. Its ...

According to this model, sigma (σ) factors bind to RNA polymerase to initiate transcription—the process by which genetic information is copied from DNA to RNA—and then detach after initiation to allow ...