To ensure proper growth, bacterial genome must be faithfully segregated so that each daughter cell, resulting from cellular division, inherits an identical copy of the mother cell genetic material. Segregation of bacterial genomes is ensured by an active system, called partition system, allowing the separation and the positioning of newly replicated DNA. By using fluorescence super-resolution microscopy techniques, the team of Marcelo Nollmann, in collaboration with the team of Jean-Yves Bouet at the Laboratoire de microbiologie et génétique moléculaires of Toulouse, reveals a new model in which the nucleoid provides a scaffold to guide the proper segregation of partition complexes. This work is published in the nature magazine Nature Communications.

New publication: "Bacterial partition complexes segregate within the volume of the nucleoid."

Authors: Antoine Le Gall, Diego I. Cattoni, Baptiste Guilhas, Céline Mathieu-Demazière, Laura Oudjedi, Jean-Bernard Fiche, Jérôme Rech, Sara Abrahamsson, Heath Murray, Jean-Yves Bouet & Marcelo Nollmann

Journal: Nature Communications, 2016, July, 7:12107, doi:10.1038/ncomms1210