Structural Determinants and Their Role in Cyanobacterial Morphogenesis

Life

Martin Pilhofer¹  GregorL. Weiss¹  Karina Stucken²  BenjaminL. Springstein³  DennisJ. Nürnberg⁴ 

[1] Department of Biology, Institute of Molecular Biology & Biophysics, ETH Zürich, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland;Department of Food Engineering, Universidad de La Serena, La Serena 1720010, Chile;Department of Microbiology, Blavatnik Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA;Department of Physics, Biophysics and Biochemistry of Photosynthetic Organisms, Freie Universität Berlin, 14195 Berlin, Germany;

关键词: cyanobacteria;    morphology;    cell division;    cell shape;    cytoskeleton;    FtsZ;   

DOI  :  10.3390/life10120355

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Cells have to erect and sustain an organized and dynamically adaptable structure for an efficient mode of operation that allows drastic morphological changes during cell growth and cell division. These manifold tasks are complied by the so-called cytoskeleton and its associated proteins. In bacteria, FtsZ and MreB, the bacterial homologs to tubulin and actin, respectively, as well as coiled-coil-rich proteins of intermediate filament (IF)-like function to fulfil these tasks. Despite generally being characterized as Gram-negative, cyanobacteria have a remarkably thick peptidoglycan layer and possess Gram-positive-specific cell division proteins such as SepF and DivIVA-like proteins, besides Gram-negative and cyanobacterial-specific cell division proteins like MinE, SepI, ZipN (Ftn2) and ZipS (Ftn6). The diversity of cellular morphologies and cell growth strategies in cyanobacteria could therefore be the result of additional unidentified structural determinants such as cytoskeletal proteins. In this article, we review the current advances in the understanding of the cyanobacterial cell shape, cell division and cell growth.

【 授权许可】

Unknown