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An analysis of the factory model for chromosome replication and segregation in bacteria
Author(s) -
Sawitzke James,
Austin Stuart
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
molecular microbiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.857
H-Index - 247
eISSN - 1365-2958
pISSN - 0950-382X
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-2958.2001.02350.x
Subject(s) - biology , chromosome segregation , sister chromatids , dna replication , genetics , chromosome , replication (statistics) , mitosis , control of chromosome duplication , origin of replication , circular bacterial chromosome , dna , cell division , microbiology and biotechnology , cell , virology , gene
Recent advances in microscopy have given us important clues as to the nature of chromosome segregation in bacteria. Most current observations favour the view that the process is co‐replicational: DNA replication forks are anchored at the cell centre, and the newly replicated DNA is moved towards the cell poles. This scheme can account for orderly segregation even at high growth rates where multiple replication cycles overlap. We argue that there are five distinct activities directly involved in co‐replicational segregation dynamics. These we refer to as Push, Direct, Condense, Hold and Clear. We attempt to assign one of these roles to each protein implicated in chromosome segregation. The proposed process is very different from mitosis in eukaryotic cells and perhaps more closely resembles the formation of separate sister chromatids during DNA replication.