Diffusion and capture permits dynamic coupling between treadmilling FtsZ filaments and cell division proteins

Baranova NS, Radler P, Hernández-Rocamora VM, Alfonso C, Lopez Pelegrin MD, Rivas G, Vollmer W, Loose M. 2020. Diffusion and capture permits dynamic coupling between treadmilling FtsZ filaments and cell division proteins. Nature Microbiology. 5, 407–417.

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Author
Baranova, NataliaISTA ; Radler, PhilippISTA ; Hernández-Rocamora, Víctor M.; Alfonso, Carlos; Lopez Pelegrin, Maria DISTA; Rivas, Germán; Vollmer, Waldemar; Loose, MartinISTA

Corresponding author has ISTA affiliation

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Abstract
Most bacteria accomplish cell division with the help of a dynamic protein complex called the divisome, which spans the cell envelope in the plane of division. Assembly and activation of this machinery are coordinated by the tubulin-related GTPase FtsZ, which was found to form treadmilling filaments on supported bilayers in vitro1, as well as in live cells, in which filaments circle around the cell division site2,3. Treadmilling of FtsZ is thought to actively move proteins around the division septum, thereby distributing peptidoglycan synthesis and coordinating the inward growth of the septum to form the new poles of the daughter cells4. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying this function are largely unknown. Here, to study how FtsZ polymerization dynamics are coupled to downstream proteins, we reconstituted part of the bacterial cell division machinery using its purified components FtsZ, FtsA and truncated transmembrane proteins essential for cell division. We found that the membrane-bound cytosolic peptides of FtsN and FtsQ co-migrated with treadmilling FtsZ–FtsA filaments, but despite their directed collective behaviour, individual peptides showed random motion and transient confinement. Our work suggests that divisome proteins follow treadmilling FtsZ filaments by a diffusion-and-capture mechanism, which can give rise to a moving zone of signalling activity at the division site.
Publishing Year
Date Published
2020-01-20
Journal Title
Nature Microbiology
Publisher
Springer Nature
Acknowledgement
We acknowledge members of the Loose laboratory at IST Austria for helpful discussions—in particular, P. Caldas for help with the treadmilling analysis, M. Jimenez, A. Raso and N. Ropero for providing Alexa Fluor 488- and Alexa Fluor 647-labelled FtsA for the MST and analytical ultracentrifugation experiments. We thank C. You for providing the DODA-tris-NTA phospholipids, as well as J. Piehler and C. Richter (Department of Biology, University of Osnabruck, Germany) for the SLIMfast single-molecule tracking software and help with the confinement analysis. We thank J. Errington and H. Murray (both at Newcastle University, UK) for critical reading of the manuscript, and J. Brugués (MPI-CBG and MPI-PKS, Dresden, Germany) for help with the MATLAB programming and reading of the manuscript. This work was supported by the European Research Council through grant ERC-2015-StG-679239 to M.L. and grants HFSP LT 000824/2016-L4 and EMBO ALTF 1163-2015 to N.B., a grant from the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of the Spanish Government (BFU2016-75471-C2-1-P) to C.A. and G.R., and a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator award (101824/Z/13/Z) and a grant from the BBSRC (BB/R017409/1) to W.V.
Volume
5
Page
407-417
ISSN
IST-REx-ID

Cite this

Baranova NS, Radler P, Hernández-Rocamora VM, et al. Diffusion and capture permits dynamic coupling between treadmilling FtsZ filaments and cell division proteins. Nature Microbiology. 2020;5:407-417. doi:10.1038/s41564-019-0657-5
Baranova, N. S., Radler, P., Hernández-Rocamora, V. M., Alfonso, C., Lopez Pelegrin, M. D., Rivas, G., … Loose, M. (2020). Diffusion and capture permits dynamic coupling between treadmilling FtsZ filaments and cell division proteins. Nature Microbiology. Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-019-0657-5
Baranova, Natalia S., Philipp Radler, Víctor M. Hernández-Rocamora, Carlos Alfonso, Maria D Lopez Pelegrin, Germán Rivas, Waldemar Vollmer, and Martin Loose. “Diffusion and Capture Permits Dynamic Coupling between Treadmilling FtsZ Filaments and Cell Division Proteins.” Nature Microbiology. Springer Nature, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-019-0657-5.
N. S. Baranova et al., “Diffusion and capture permits dynamic coupling between treadmilling FtsZ filaments and cell division proteins,” Nature Microbiology, vol. 5. Springer Nature, pp. 407–417, 2020.
Baranova NS, Radler P, Hernández-Rocamora VM, Alfonso C, Lopez Pelegrin MD, Rivas G, Vollmer W, Loose M. 2020. Diffusion and capture permits dynamic coupling between treadmilling FtsZ filaments and cell division proteins. Nature Microbiology. 5, 407–417.
Baranova, Natalia S., et al. “Diffusion and Capture Permits Dynamic Coupling between Treadmilling FtsZ Filaments and Cell Division Proteins.” Nature Microbiology, vol. 5, Springer Nature, 2020, pp. 407–17, doi:10.1038/s41564-019-0657-5.
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