Bacterial cells polymerize a tubulin homologue called FtsZ at their midpoint to drive cell division. FtsZ inhibitors called Min proteins prevent division near cell ends. But a second inhibition is thought to be mediated by the DNA mass in the center of the cell, which prevents division there until the two DNA masses are segregated away from the cell center. Now, Jeff Errington has announced the discovery of a candidate for this second inhibition event—a nucleoid occlusion protein called Noc.
Nucleoids keep rings of FtsZ (green), and thus division, in the right place.
Errington
“We stumbled across this gene completely serendipitously,” said Errington in his talk. His team started with bacteria lacking a min gene, and combined it with a deletion in another cell division gene. But the second gene deletion happened to take out yet a third gene, now named noc. Although bacteria...
