ArticleBiophysical journal2011
Mechanical control of bacterial cell shape.
Article in Biophysical journal, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 40 papers.
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Who cites it
40 citing papers in PubMed.
- Rapid key gene discovery for bacterial shape: a cross-species machine learning approach.BMC microbiology · 2025Article
- Mechanics ofMolecular biology of the cell · 2025Article
- Organic particle scavenging by marine bacteria: influences of bacterial nanoscale surface properties.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- Mechanics limits ecological diversity and promotes heterogeneity in confined bacterial communities.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Power Laws Describe Bacterial Viscoelasticity.Langmuir : the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids · 2022Article
- Morphologic design of nanostructures for enhanced antimicrobial activity.Journal of nanobiotechnology · 2022Review
- Cellular resource allocation strategies for cell size and shape control in bacteria.The FEBS journal · 2022Review
- Emergent spatiotemporal population dynamics with cell-length control of synthetic microbial consortia.PLoS computational biology · 2021Article
- Cell biomechanics and mechanobiology in bacteria: Challenges and opportunities.APL bioengineering · 2020Review
- Membrane molecular crowding enhances MreB polymerization to shape synthetic cells from spheres to rods.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Article
- A statistical physics view of swarming bacteria.Movement ecology · 2019Review
- Emergence ofProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Article
- Host-Polarized Cell Growth in Animal Symbionts.Current biology : CB · 2018Article
- Review
- Elongation and shape changes in organisms with cell walls: A dialogue between experiments and models.Cell surface (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2018Review
- Beyond force generation: Why is a dynamic ring of FtsZ polymers essential for bacterial cytokinesis?BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology · 2017Review
- Integrating Cellular and Bioprocess Engineering in the Non-Conventional YeastFrontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2017Review
- Design principles for nonequilibrium self-assembly.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2016Article
- Shape Selection of Surface-Bound Helical Filaments: Biopolymers on Curved Membranes.Biophysical journal · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
In bacteria, cytoskeletal filament bundles such as MreB control the cell morphology and determine whether the cell takes on a spherical or a rod-like shape. Here we use a theoretical model to describe the interplay of cell wall growth, mechanics, and cytoskeletal filaments in shaping the bacterial cell. We predict that growing cells without MreB exhibit an instability that favors rounded cells. MreB can mechanically reinforce the cell wall and prevent the onset of instability. We propose that the overall bacterial shape is determined by a dynamic turnover of cell wall material that is controlled by mechanical stresses in the wall. The model affirms that morphological transformations with and without MreB are reversible, and quantitatively describes the growth of irregular shapes and cells undergoing division. The theory also suggests a unique coupling between mechanics and chemistry that can control organismal shapes in general.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.