| Making a new ring every 20 minutes
Cell division, the final stage of the bacterial cell cycle, involves a network of molecules to control the position of the division machinery, the divisome, at midcell. In E. coli, a bacterium that lives in our gut, the initial assembly of the division machinery requires three major proteins, FtsZ, FtsA and ZipA, and together these proteins form the proto-ring at midcell. In a recent minireview published in The Journal of Biological Chemistry, researchers at the Centro Nacional de Biotecnologia in Madrid describe the importance of these proteins in the formation, maturation, stabilization and function of the E. coli division machinery. |  |