Project description:The Escherichia coli nucleoid is confined within a rod shaped cell many times smaller than the outstretched chromosome. While extensive compaction is necessary for this process, the chromosome must at the same time remain accessible to essential cellular processes such as replication and transcription. Currently, the individual contributions of cellular confinement, chromosome topology, replication and transcription on nucleoid organization are not well understood. Here we synchronize E. coli cells in stationary phase, where replication has ceased, each cell contains only one copy of the chromosome, and transcription is minimal. We then release the cells and capture chromosome contacts and transcription immediately following release and through-out one cell cycle. Polymer models of confined and topologically constrained circular polymers revealed that cellular confinement and topology do not contribute extensively to the organization of the E. coli nucleoid. Rather, local nucleoid structure is established concurrent with replication, and higher order organization is formed by the replication dependant clustering of linearly distant SeqA bound sites and cell cycle specific gene transcription.
Project description:The Escherichia coli nucleoid is confined within a rod shaped cell many times smaller than the outstretched chromosome. While extensive compaction is necessary for this process, the chromosome must at the same time remain accessible to essential cellular processes such as replication and transcription. Currently, the individual contributions of cellular confinement, chromosome topology, replication and transcription on nucleoid organization are not well understood. Here we synchronize E. coli cells in stationary phase, where replication has ceased, each cell contains only one copy of the chromosome, and transcription is minimal. We then release the cells and capture chromosome contacts and transcription immediately following release and through-out one cell cycle. Polymer models of confined and topologically constrained circular polymers revealed that cellular confinement and topology do not contribute extensively to the organization of the E. coli nucleoid. Rather, local nucleoid structure is established concurrent with replication, and higher order organization is formed by the replication dependant clustering of linearly distant SeqA bound sites and cell cycle specific gene transcription.
Project description:SMC (structural maintenance of chromosomes) complexes function ubiquitously in organizing and maintaining chromosomes. Functional fluorescent derivatives of the Escherichia coli SMC complex, MukBEF, form foci that associate with the replication origin region (ori). MukBEF impairment results in mispositioning of ori and other loci in steady-state cells. These observations led to an earlier proposal that MukBEF positions new replicated sister oris. We show here that MukBEF generates and maintains the cellular positioning of chromosome loci independently of DNA replication. Rapid impairment of MukBEF function by depleting a Muk component in the absence of DNA replication leads to loss of MukBEF foci as well as mispositioning of ori and other loci, while rapid Muk synthesis leads to rapid MukBEF focus formation but slow restoration of normal chromosomal locus positioning.