ArticleCurrent biology : CB2019
Cell Boundary Confinement Sets the Size and Position of the E. coli Chromosome.
Article in Current biology : CB, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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33 citing papers in PubMed, 73 citations in OpenAlex.
- Review
- Gene loci fluctuations reveal bacterial chromosome dynamical organization.Communications biology · 2025Article
- The role of active mRNA-ribosome dynamics and closing constriction in daughter chromosome separation inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Segregation of sister chromosomes during the shape change of developingJournal of bacteriology · 2025Article
- E. coli filament buckling modulates Min patterning and cell division.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Nonequilibrium polysome dynamics promote chromosome segregation and its coupling to cell growth ineLife · 2025Article
- The nucleoid of rapidly growing Escherichia coli localizes close to the inner membrane and is organized by transcription, translation, and cell geometry.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Nonequilibrium polysome dynamics promote chromosome segregation and its coupling to cell growth inbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Differentiating the roles of proteins and polysomes in nucleoid size homeostasis in Escherichia coli.Biophysical journal · 2024Article
- Macromolecular Crowding, Phase Separation, and Homeostasis in the Orchestration of Bacterial Cellular Functions.Chemical reviews · 2024Review
- Molecular Dynamics Simulation of a Feather-Boa Model of a Bacterial Chromosome.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2024Article
- Simulation-based Reconstructed Diffusion unveils the effect of aging on protein diffusion in Escherichia coli.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- Physicochemical homeostasis in bacteria.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2023Article
- Interpretation of organizational role of proteins on E. coli nucleoid via Hi-C integrated model.Biophysical journal · 2023Article
- DNA supercoiling in bacteria: state of play and challenges from a viewpoint of physics based modeling.Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Review
- MukBEF-dependent chromosomal organization in widenedFrontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- Confinement anisotropy drives polar organization of two DNA molecules interacting in a nanoscale cavity.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Stochastic nucleoid segregation dynamics as a source of the phenotypic variability in E. coli.Biophysical journal · 2021Article
- Steric interactions and out-of-equilibrium processes control the internal organization of bacteria.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
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12 authors at 6 institutions in 3 countries.
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Abstract
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.
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