Self-organization of the Escherichia coli chemotaxis network imaged with super-resolution light microscopy.

ABSTRACT: The Escherichia coli chemotaxis network is a model system for biological signal processing. In E. coli, transmembrane receptors responsible for signal transduction assemble into large clusters containing several thousand proteins. These sensory clusters have been observed at cell poles and future division sites. Despite extensive study, it remains unclear how chemotaxis clusters form, what controls cluster size and density, and how the cellular location of clusters is robustly maintained in growing and dividing cells. Here, we use photoactivated localization microscopy (PALM) to map the cellular locations of three proteins central to bacterial chemotaxis (the Tar receptor, CheY, and CheW) with a precision of 15 nm. We find that cluster sizes are approximately exponentially distributed, wit

SUBMITTER: Greenfield D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2691949 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature