ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2014
Rod-like bacterial shape is maintained by feedback between cell curvature and cytoskeletal localization.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 140 papers.
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Who cites it
140 citing papers in PubMed.
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- Sensing the shape of a surface by tightly surface-bound filaments.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Emergent collective alignment gives competitive advantage to longer cells during range expansion.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Bacterial cell widening alters periplasmic size and activates envelope stress responses.The EMBO journal · 2025Article
- Mechanics ofMolecular biology of the cell · 2025Article
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- Chromosome segregation dynamics during the cell cycle of Staphylococcus aureus.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Exploration and analytical techniques for membrane curvature-sensing proteins in bacteria.Journal of bacteriology · 2025Review
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- A lytic transglycosylase connects bacterial focal adhesion complexes to the peptidoglycan cell wall.eLife · 2024Article
- A lytic transglycosylase connects bacterial focal adhesion complexes to the peptidoglycan cell wall.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
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- Mechanical stimuli activate gene expression via a cell envelope stress sensing pathway.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Cell envelope growth of Gram-negative bacteria proceeds independently of cell wall synthesis.The EMBO journal · 2023Article
- Methods to monitor bacterial growth and replicative rates at the single-cell level.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2022Review
- Enzyme 1 of the phosphoenolpyruvate:sugar phosphotransferase system is involved in resistance to MreB disruption in wild-type and ∆envC cells.Molecular microbiology · 2022Article
- Feedback linking cell envelope stiffness, curvature, and synthesis enables robust rod-shaped bacterial growth.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
80 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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9 authors.
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Abstract
Cells typically maintain characteristic shapes, but the mechanisms of self-organization for robust morphological maintenance remain unclear in most systems. Precise regulation of rod-like shape in Escherichia coli cells requires the MreB actin-like cytoskeleton, but the mechanism by which MreB maintains rod-like shape is unknown. Here, we use time-lapse and 3D imaging coupled with computational analysis to map the growth, geometry, and cytoskeletal organization of single bacterial cells at subcellular resolution. Our results demonstrate that feedback between cell geometry and MreB localization maintains rod-like cell shape by targeting cell wall growth to regions of negative cell wall curvature. Pulse-chase labeling indicates that growth is heterogeneous and correlates spatially and temporally with MreB localization, whereas MreB inhibition results in more homogeneous growth, including growth in polar regions previously thought to be inert. Biophysical simulations establish that curvature feedback on the localization of cell wall growth is an effective mechanism for cell straightening and suggest that surface deformations caused by cell wall insertion could direct circumferential motion of MreB. Our work shows that MreB orchestrates persistent, heterogeneous growth at the subcellular scale, enabling robust, uniform growth at the cellular scale without requiring global organization.
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