Cryo-electron microscopy to study fundamental bacterial processes: bacterial cell division

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Bacterial cell biology has seen a renaissance in the past several years that has been spurred in part by advances in imaging techniques. The ability of researchers to peer into cells and describe the localization and organization of macromolecular complexes involved in basic biological processes has advanced our understanding of how bacterial cells grow, move and divide. Major advances in fluorescence microscopy, cryo-electron microscopy (CEM) and cryo-electron tomography (CET) have provided new insight into the bacterial ultrastructures that accomplish these fundamental processes. It is now apparent that not unlike like their distant eukaryotic counterparts, bacteria are highly organized cells that possess internalized compartments, cytoskeletons, organized genomes and carefully positioned macromolecular machines. Furthermore, advances in imaging are providing evidence that these cellular systems and assemblies do not function independently, but generally in concert, to accomplish cellular goals. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the process of bacterial cell division, where the combination of cellular, molecular and imaging techniques are beginning to provided a wealth of knowledge about this most basic and fundamental bacterial process. This research project aims to use and develop cutting-edge cryo-electron microscopy techniques to determine the molecular architecture of protein complexes involved in bacterial cell division. Our long-term goal is to use our improved knowledge of the mechanism of cell division to identify new drug targets and exploit this fundamental process to fight the growing number of multi-drug resistant strains of bacteria.