Life without a wall or division machine in Bacillus subtilis
Event details
| Date | 13.03.2009 |
| Hour | 15:30 |
| Speaker | Jeff Errington |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
The cell wall is an essential structure for virtually all bacteria, forming a tough outer shell that protects the cell from damage and osmotic lysis. It is the target for our best antibiotics. L-forms are wall-deficient derivatives of common bacteria that have been studied for decades. However, they are difficult to generate and typically require growth for many generations on osmotically protective media with antibiotics or enzymes that kill walled forms. Despite their potential importance for understanding antibiotic resistance and pathogenesis, little is known about their basic cell biology or their means of propagation. We have developed a controllable system for generating L-forms in the highly tractable model bacterium Bacillus subtilis. Genome sequencing identified a single point mutation that predisposes cells to grow without a wall. These experiments were originally aimed at testing the role of the wall in cell division. However, we found that propagation of L-forms does not require the normal FtsZ-dependent division machine that is thought to be crucial for proliferation throughout the bacteria. Instead, L-forms propagate by a novel and completely unexpected mechanism we call extrusion-resolution, or “extrolution”. The existence of this form of proliferation has implications for understanding how early forms of cellular life may have proliferated.
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Practical information
- General public
- Free
Contact
- Prof. Stewart Cole