Abstract
Bacterial cells have characteristic spatial and temporal scales. For instance, Escherichia coli, the typical rod-shaped bacteria, always maintains a relatively constant cell width and cell division time. However, whether the external physical perturbation of cell width has an impact on cell division time remains largely unexplored. In this work, we developed two microchannel chips, namely straight channels and ‘necked’ channels, to precisely regulate the width of E. coli cells and to investigate the correlation between cell width and division time of the cells. Our results show that, in the straight channels, the wide cells divide much slower than narrow cells. In the ‘necked’ channels, the cell division is remarkably promoted compared to that in straight channels with the same width. Besides, fluorescence time-lapse microscopy imaging of FtsZ dynamics shows that the cell pre-constriction time is more sensitive to cell width perturbation than cell constriction time. Finally, we revealed a significant anticorrelation between the death rate and the division rate of cell populations with different widths. Our work provides new insights into the correlation between the geometrical property and division time of E. coli cells and sheds new light on the future study of spatial–temporal correlation in cell physiology.
Highlights
Bacterial cells have characteristic spatial and temporal scales
Bacterial cell division is a complex process that contains numerous molecular events, including chromosome replication and s egregation[20], division site p ositioning[21], septum a ssembly[22], cell constriction coupled with cell wall s ynthesis[23], some of which might be sensitive to cell width
As we have shown that changing the width of entire cells of E. coli will result in a significant change of cell division time, it is of great interest to ask whether this effect could be local, that is, whether local modification of cell width has an impact on cell division time? To answer this question, we developed a dedicated sandwich chip with ‘necked’ channels: all ‘necked’ channels with fixed width of 3.4 μm and periodic local constrictions
Summary
Bacterial cells have characteristic spatial and temporal scales. For instance, Escherichia coli, the typical rod-shaped bacteria, always maintains a relatively constant cell width and cell division time. Escherichia coli, the rod-shaped bacteria always grow along the long axis of the cell and maintain its cell width constant during the cell cycle Whether those models still work out when their cell width is disturbed, remains to be explored. Other cell division related processes, such as Min o scillation[19,30], chromosome r eplication[31,32] and FtsZ turnover and polymerization dynamics[33] are subjected to the modulation of cell width Despite these previous works, it remains largely unclear whether perturbation of cell width will affect cell division time of E. coli, due to the lack of proper experimental methods to investigate the division time of cells with different width systematically. For the first time, revealed how physical modulation of cell width leads to the significant change of cell division time and survivability of E. coli, which will shed new light on further exploration of the interplay between cell morphology and physiology
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