Establishing rod shape from spherical, peptidoglycan-deficient bacterial spores

Huan Zhang (1) , Garrett Mulholland (1) , Sofiene Seef (2) , Shiwei Zhu (3) , Jun Liu (3) , Tam Mignot (2) , Beiyan Nan (1)

1 Texas A&M University [College Station]
2 LCB - Laboratoire de chimie bactérienne
3 YSM - Yale School of Medicine [New Haven, Connecticut]

Chemical-induced spores of the Gram-negative bacterium Myxococcus xanthus are peptidoglycan (PG)-deficient. It is unclear how these spherical spores germinate into rod-shaped, walled cells without preexisting PG templates. We found that germinating spores first synthesize PG randomly on spherical surfaces. MglB, a GTPase-activating protein, forms a cluster that responds to the status of PG growth and stabilizes at one future cell pole. Following MglB, the Ras family GTPase MglA localizes to the second pole. MglA directs molecular motors to transport the bacterial actin homolog MreB and the Rod PG synthesis complexes away from poles. The Rod system establishes rod shape de novo by elongating PG at nonpolar regions. Thus, similar to eukaryotic cells, the interactions between GTPase, cytoskeletons, and molecular motors initiate spontaneous polarization in bacteria.

Keywords: germination; Rod system; MreB; GTPase; gliding motor

Domains: Life Sciences [q-bio]

Huan Zhang, Garrett Mulholland, Sofiene Seef, Shiwei Zhu, Jun Liu, et al.. Establishing rod shape from spherical, peptidoglycan-deficient bacterial spores. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020, 117 (25), pp.14444-14452. ⟨10.1073/pnas.2001384117⟩. ⟨hal-02995861⟩