Journal
CURRENT BIOLOGY
Volume 29, Issue 13, Pages 2131-+Publisher
CELL PRESS
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2019.05.015
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO)
- NWO/OCW program NanoFront
- European Research Council Advanced Grant SynDiv [669598]
- NSF CAREER grant [MCB-1253843]
- NIH [R01 GM118565-01]
- SERB, India [EMR/2016/001454]
- NWO/OCW program Basyc
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Although the spatiotemporal structure of the genome is crucial to its biological function, many basic questions remain unanswered on the morphology and segregation of chromosomes. Here, we experimentally show in Escherichia coli that spatial confinement plays a dominant role in determining both the chromosome size and position. In non-dividing cells with lengths increased to 10 times normal, single chromosomes are observed to expand > 4-fold in size. Chromosomes show pronounced internal dynamics but exhibit a robust positioning where single nucleoids reside robustly at mid-cell, whereas two nucleoids self-organize at 1/4 and 3/4 positions. The cell-size-dependent expansion of the nucleoid is only modestly influenced by deletions of nucleoid-associated proteins, whereas osmotic manipulation experiments reveal a prominent role of molecular crowding. Molecular dynamics simulations with model chromosomes and crowders recapitulate the observed phenomena and highlight the role of entropic effects caused by confinement and molecular crowding in the spatial organization of the chromosome.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available