PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Alexandre W. Bisson Filho
AU  - Yen-Pang Hsu
AU  - Georgia R. Squyres
AU  - Erkin Kuru
AU  - Fabai Wu
AU  - Calum Jukes
AU  - Cees Dekker
AU  - Seamus Holden
AU  - Michael S. VanNieuwenhze
AU  - Yves V. Brun
AU  - Ethan C. Garner
TI  - Treadmilling by FtsZ filaments drives peptidoglycan synthesis and bacterial cell division
AID  - 10.1101/077560
DP  - 2016 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 077560
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/09/26/077560.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/09/26/077560.full
AB  - How bacteria produce a septum to divide in two is not well understood. This process is mediated by periplasmic cell-wall producing enzymes that are positioned by filaments of the cytoplasmic membrane-associated actin FtsA and the tubulin FtsZ (FtsAZ). To understand how these components act in concert to divide cells, we visualized their movements relative to the dynamics of cell wall synthesis during cytokinesis. We find that the division septum is built at discrete sites that move around the division plane. Furthermore, FtsAZ filaments treadmill in circumferential paths around the division ring, pulling along the associated cell-wall-synthesizing enzymes. We show that the rate of FtsZ treadmilling controls both the rate of cell wall synthesis and cell division. The coupling of both the position and activity of the cell wall synthases to FtsAZ treadmilling guides the progressive insertion of new cell wall, synthesizing increasingly small concentric rings to divide the cell.One-sentence summary Bacterial cytokinesis is controlled by circumferential treadmilling of FtsAZ filaments that drives the insertion of new cell wall.