Seminar by Professor Seamus Holden, University of Warwick on 5th December at 12:00 in IBR Seminar room, University of Birmingham.

Presentation on: The role of cytoskeleton dynamics in bacterial cell division

The ancestral tubulin homologue FtsZ is essential for cell division in almost all bacteria. FtsZ localises to the mid-cell as a dense band, known as the Z-ring, where it recruits and directs the cell wall synthesis proteins that build a mid-cell crosswall called the septum. Several years ago, we and others discovered that FtsZ filaments move around the cell surface by a type of motion known as treadmilling. This is where cytoskeleton filaments - actin being the best known example - move by plus end polymerization and minus end depolymerization. I will discuss our progress towards understanding the functional role of FtsZ dynamics in bacterial cell division in the primary Gram-positive model organism Bacillus subtilis. Since bacteria are so small and this work is heavily microscopy-driven, it has been necessary to push the technical limits of single molecule microscopy to allow us to tackle our biological questions of interest; these efforts will also be discussed.