Symmetry and scale orient Min protein patterns in shaped bacterial sculptures.

ABSTRACT: The boundary of a cell defines the shape and scale of its subcellular organization. However, the effects of the cell's spatial boundaries as well as the geometry sensing and scale adaptation of intracellular molecular networks remain largely unexplored. Here, we show that living bacterial cells can be 'sculpted' into defined shapes, such as squares and rectangles, which are used to explore the spatial adaptation of Min proteins that oscillate pole-to-pole in rod-shaped Escherichia coli to assist cell division. In a wide geometric parameter space, ranging from 2 × 1 × 1 to 11 × 6 × 1 μm(3), Min proteins exhibit versatile oscillation patterns, sustaining rotational, longitudinal, diagonal, stripe and even transversal modes. These patterns are found to directly capture the symmetry and scale

SUBMITTER: Wu F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4966624 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature