Divisome and segrosome components of Deinococcus radiodurans interact through cell division regulatory proteins

The Deinococcus radiodurans genome encodes many of the known components of divisome as well as four sets of genome partitioning proteins, ParA and ParB on its multipartite genome. Interdependent regulation of cell division and genome segregation is not understood. In vivo interactions of D. radiodurans' sdivisome, segrosome and other cell division regulatory proteins expressed on multicopy plasmids were studied in Escherichia coli using a bacterial two-hybrid system and confirmed by co-immunoprecipitation with the proteins made in E. coli. Many of these showed interactions both with the self and with other proteins. For example, DrFtsA, DrFtsZ, DrMinD, DrMinC, DrDivIVA and all four ParB proteins individually formed at least homodimers, while DrFtsA interacted with DrFtsZ, DrFtsW, DrFtsE, DrFtsK and DrMinD. DrMinD also showed interaction with DrFtsW, DrFtsE and DrMinC. Interestingly, septum site determining protein, DrDivIVA showed interactions with secondary genome ParAs as well as ParB1, ParB3 and ParB4 while DrMinC interacted with ParB1 and ParB3. PprA, a pleiotropic protein recently implicated in cell division regulation, neither interacted with divisome proteins nor ParBs but interacted at different levels with all four ParAs. These results suggest the formation of independent multiprotein complexes of 'DrFts' proteins, segrosome proteins and cell division regulatory proteins, and these complexes could interact with each other through DrMinC and DrDivIVA, and PprA in D. radiodurans.