Title: Mechanistic Insights into the Force-Generating Mechanisms Used to Divide Bacteria
Description: Since the discovery of the bacterial cell division machinery 30 years ago, we still lack an understanding of how it exerts its primary function, providing the force to divide bacteria in two. Our and other groups' imaging efforts have gained new insights into the cellular dynamics of the division machinery and how the dynamics of FtsZ filaments are involved in and regulate the division machinery. Through our studies of the dynamics of the division machinery, we recently began to understand the role of the bacterial membrane, as being inward requires a substantial amount of force. We demonstrate this inward deformation arises from a simple phenomenon that occurs in every membrane-deforming system in eukaryotes: the crowding of proteins into a small location on the membrane surface.