Bacterial cytoskeletal oscillators (Collaborator: Prof. Yu-Ling Shih)

The cell division in Escherichia coli requires the septal machinery to be precisely placed at the middle of a cell. The dynamic pole-to-pole oscillation of the Min system is critical to the division site placement and consequently prevents the inadequate division which results in the production of unequal-sized daughter cells. The MinD cytoskeleton is the central participant of this process. The mechanism of oscillation has been proposed to underlie cycles of rapid polymerization and depolymerization of the MinD protein filaments through the MinE-regulated ATP binding and hydrolysis in MinD. Our goals are to characterize MinD dynamics both in vivo and in vitro through: (1) analysis of MinD oscillation patterns in live E. coli when cells are confined in microfluidic channels of defined shapes, and (2) in vitro characterization of MinD-membrane interaction.

Figure 4: Cycling mechanism of MinD protein oscillation in Escherichia coli.

Reference:

1. L. Rothfield, A. Taghbalout, and Y.L. Shih, “Spatial control of bacterial division-site placement.” Nature Reviews Microbiology, 3(12) 959-968, 2005.

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