Two short stories about cell division and cell wall growth
Dirk-Jan Scheffers, University of Groningen, Netherlands
| When |
13 Sep, 2012
from
12:00 pm to 01:00 pm |
|---|---|
| Where | Room 2.13 |
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Seminar
Title: Two short stories about cell division and cell wall growth
Speaker: Dirk-Jan Scheffers
Affiliation: Molecular Microbiology dept., University of Groningen, Netherlands
Host: Adriano Henriques - Microbial Development Lab
Abstract:
Bacteria grow and divide in a regulated manner. Research in my group addresses the coordination of cell division and synthesis of the cell wall in model-organisms such as Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis using biochemistry and microscopy as our main tools. In this talk I will give two examples of our current work on these topics and with these techniques.
First, I will address the interaction of the cell division proteins FtsZ and SepF. We have developed a pull-down method to test for protein-protein interactions between the C-terminus of FtsZ and candidate interacting proteins. I will discuss the method and the results in some detail. Second, we are investigating the positioning of PBPs, proteins involved in bacterial cell wall synthesis. Two different models for localization of PBPs have been proposed – localization through interaction with a cytoskeletal structure or localization through the presence of substrate. I will present data that show that the substrate availability model is valid for B. subtilis PBPs that were previously thought to be guided by the cytoskeleton.
