PMID:23452849

Citation	Mercier, R, Kawai, Y and Errington, J (2013) Excess membrane synthesis drives a primitive mode of cell proliferation. Cell 152:997-1007
Abstract	The peptidoglycan cell wall is a hallmark of the bacterial subkingdom. Surprisingly, many modern bacteria retain the ability to switch into a wall-free state called the L-form. L-form proliferation is remarkable in being independent of the normally essential FtsZ-based division machinery and in occurring by membrane blebbing and tubulation. We show that mutations leading to excess membrane synthesis are sufficient to drive L-form division in Bacillus subtilis. Artificially increasing the cell surface area to volume ratio in wild-type protoplasts generates similar shape changes and cell division. Our findings show that simple biophysical processes could have supported efficient cell proliferation during the evolution of early cells and provide an extant biological model for studying this problem.
Links	PubMed Online version:10.1016/j.cell.2013.01.043
Keywords	Bacillus subtilis/cytology; Bacillus subtilis/metabolism; Bacterial Proteins/genetics; Bacterial Proteins/metabolism; Cell Division; Cell Membrane/metabolism; Cell Proliferation; Cell Wall/metabolism; Fatty Acid Synthetase Complex/genetics; Fatty Acid Synthetase Complex/metabolism; L Forms/cytology; L Forms/metabolism; Malonyl Coenzyme A/metabolism; Membrane Proteins/genetics; Membrane Proteins/metabolism; Peptidoglycan/metabolism; Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; Protoplasts/metabolism
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Materials and Methods Used

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Phenotype Annotations

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Phenotype of	Taxon Information	Genotype Information (if known)	Condition Information	OMP ID	OMP Term Name	ECO ID	ECO Term Name	Notes	Status
a mutation or genetic difference within a strain	Taxon: Escherichia coli Strain: K-12 Substrain: LR2 NCBI Taxon ID: 83333	Genotype of Reference Strain: LR2	Reference Condition:					repression of the murE-B operon allowed vigorous L-form growth.
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