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Metabolism, cell growth and the bacterial cell cycle

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 7, pages 822–827 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

Adaptation to fluctuations in nutrient availability is a fact of life for single-celled organisms in the 'wild'. A decade ago our understanding of how bacteria adjust cell cycle parameters to accommodate changes in nutrient availability stemmed almost entirely from elegant physiological studies completed in the 1960s. In this Opinion article we summarize recent groundbreaking work in this area and discuss potential mechanisms by which nutrient availability and metabolic status are coordinated with cell growth, chromosome replication and cell division.

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Figure 1: The bacterial cell cycle.
Figure 2: Nutrient availability, DNA replication and chromosome segregation.
Figure 3: Spatial and temporal regulation of cell division is achieved through multiple layers of control.

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Acknowledgements

We thank D. Bates, A. Goranov and B. Hill for comments. Work in the Wang laboratory is supported by the Welch Foundation (Q-1698) and Public Health Service grants (GM084003 and DP2OD004433) from the US National Institutes of Health. Work in the Levin laboratory is supported by Public Health Services grant (GM64671) from the US National Institutes of Health and a National Science Foundation CAREER award (MCB-0448186).

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  1. Jue D. Wang is at the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas 77030, USA. jdwang@bcm.edu,

    Jue D. Wang

  2. Petra A. Levin is at the Department of Biology, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri 63130, USA. plevin@biology.wustl.edu,

    Petra A. Levin

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Wang, J., Levin, P. Metabolism, cell growth and the bacterial cell cycle. Nat Rev Microbiol 7, 822–827 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro2202

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