Noise-induced Min phenotypes in E. coli.

ABSTRACT: The spatiotemporal oscillations of the Escherichia coli proteins MinD and MinE direct cell division to the region between the chromosomes. Several quantitative models of the Min system have been suggested before, but no one of them accounts for the behavior of all documented mutant phenotypes. We analyzed the stochastic reaction-diffusion kinetics of the Min proteins for several E. coli mutants and compared the results to the corresponding deterministic mean-field description. We found that wild-type (wt) and filamentous (ftsZ-) cells are well characterized by the mean-field model, but that a stochastic model is necessary to account for several of the characteristics of the spherical (rodA-) and phospathedylethanolamide-deficient (PE-) phenotypes. For spherical cells, the mean-field model

SUBMITTER: Fange D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1484588 | biostudies-literature | 2006 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature