Into the life and death: RecA a WISE factor working to integrate survival and evolution in Escherichia coli

Escherichia coli RecA has been considered traditionally a cellular protein with multiple vital functions working to ensure the maintenance of integrity of genome in each individual bacterial cell as well as promoting swarming migration in collectivity. On the contrary, recently it has been described that RecA promotes cellular apoptotic-like death (ALD), a pathway of programmed cellular death (PCD). In fact, RecA has been dubbed as the major apoptotic executor in E. coli. From these studies, RecA emerges as a prototypical Gin/Gan protein that despite of their intrinsic vital and lethal anfi-funcionality becomes in a WISE factor: a Worker to Integrate Survival and Evolution in E. coli evolving populations living in community. Here, I provide a review of recent experimental and conceptual advances trying to understand these RecA’s antagonistic roles in appearance contradictory under a unified biological vision.