The bacterial divisome: more than a ring?

Abstract

Bacterial cells are critically dependent on their ability to divide. The process of division is carried out by a large and highly dynamic molecular machine, known as the divisome. An understanding of the divisomes' architecture is highly sought after, as it is essential for understanding molecular mechanisms and potentially designing antibiotic molecules that curb bacterial growth. Our current view, which is mainly based on high-resolution imaging of Escherichia coli, is that it is a patchy ring or toroid structure. However, recent super-resolution imaging has shown that the toroid structure contains at least three concentric rings, each containing a different set of proteins. Thus, the emerging picture is that the divisome has different functional modules that are spatially separated in concentric rings.