92 / 155
Single-Cell Biophysics: Measurement, Modulation, and Modeling
Poster Abstracts
87
85-POS
Board 43
Probing Cell-Wall Synthetic Dynamic Using Bacterial Membrane Protein-Complex
Yi-Ren Sun
, Chien-Jung Lo.
National Central University, Chung-Li, Taiwan.
Self-Replication is one of most amazing process of living organism. Bacteria have to elongate
their cell body as the preparation for division. Bacterial cell-wall is made by peptidoglycan (PG).
As cell elongate, elongasome, a group of membrane associate enzymes, carry out the PG
insertion on the cell-wall which is guided by the cytoskeletal protein MreB filament. We aim to
understand the cell-wall synthetic dynamic as cells reproduce by observing the interaction among
the PG insertion, elongasome/divisome and MreB/Ftsz filaments.
Bacterial flagellar motor is a protein-complex anchored on the cell membrane to rotate the
extracellular flagellum for swimming. We use bacterial flagellar motor as markers to study the
PG insertion. That is, when the new PG strand been inserted, the original cell-wall with the
motors embedded in it will be pushed away from its original location. Therefore, by observe the
movement of the motors as cells reproduce, we can observe the spatiotemporal coordination of
the PG insertion. In our experiment, we observe the dynamics of fluorescent hook of flagella
during the duplication process. We will discuss the implication of our observation.