TY - JOUR
T1 - Localization, assembly, and activation of the escherichia coli cell division machinery
AU - Levin, Petra Anne
AU - Janakiraman, Anuradha
N1 - Funding Information:
It is difficult to do justice to the extensive body of work in the area of E. coli cell division. We apologize to the many authors who have made significant contributions to our knowledge in this area and whose publications we have failed to include here. We thank the members of our labs for lively and helpful conversations over the course of writing this article, the reviewers whose comments and suggestions helped improve the final manuscript, and Patrick Lane for help with the figures. Research in the Levin lab is supported by NIH GM127331 and Janakiraman lab by NSF MCB 1615858.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/12
Y1 - 2021/12
N2 - Decades of research, much of it in Escherichia coli, have yielded a wealth of insight into bacterial cell division. Here, we provide an overview of the E. coli division machinery with an emphasis on recent findings. We begin with a short historical perspective into the discovery of FtsZ, the tubulin homolog that is essential for division in bacteria and archaea. We then discuss assembly of the divisome, an FtsZ-dependent multiprotein platform, at the midcell septal site. Not simply a scaffold, the dynamic properties of polymeric FtsZ ensure the efficient and uniform synthesis of septal peptidoglycan. Next, we describe the remodeling of the cell wall, invagination of the cell envelope, and disassembly of the division apparatus culminating in scission of the mother cell into two daughter cells. We conclude this review by highlighting some of the open questions in the cell division field, emphasizing that much remains to be discovered, even in an organism as extensively studied as E. coli.
AB - Decades of research, much of it in Escherichia coli, have yielded a wealth of insight into bacterial cell division. Here, we provide an overview of the E. coli division machinery with an emphasis on recent findings. We begin with a short historical perspective into the discovery of FtsZ, the tubulin homolog that is essential for division in bacteria and archaea. We then discuss assembly of the divisome, an FtsZ-dependent multiprotein platform, at the midcell septal site. Not simply a scaffold, the dynamic properties of polymeric FtsZ ensure the efficient and uniform synthesis of septal peptidoglycan. Next, we describe the remodeling of the cell wall, invagination of the cell envelope, and disassembly of the division apparatus culminating in scission of the mother cell into two daughter cells. We conclude this review by highlighting some of the open questions in the cell division field, emphasizing that much remains to be discovered, even in an organism as extensively studied as E. coli.
KW - Cell division
KW - Divisome
KW - Escherichia coli
KW - FtsZ
KW - Peptidoglycan
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85122506421&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1128/ECOSALPLUS.ESP-0022-2021
DO - 10.1128/ECOSALPLUS.ESP-0022-2021
M3 - Article
C2 - 34910577
AN - SCOPUS:85122506421
SN - 2324-6200
VL - 9
JO - EcoSal Plus
JF - EcoSal Plus
IS - 2
ER -