Cell morphology and nucleoid dynamics in dividing Deinococcus radiodurans

Kevin Floc’h, Françoise Lacroix, Pascale Servant, Yung-Sing Wong, Jean-Philippe Kleman, Dominique Bourgeois and Joanna Timmins ()
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Kevin Floc’h: Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CEA, CNRS, IBS
Françoise Lacroix: Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CEA, CNRS, IBS
Pascale Servant: Univ. Paris-Sud, Université Paris-Saclay
Yung-Sing Wong: Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, DPM
Jean-Philippe Kleman: Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CEA, CNRS, IBS
Dominique Bourgeois: Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CEA, CNRS, IBS
Joanna Timmins: Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CEA, CNRS, IBS

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: Abstract Our knowledge of bacterial nucleoids originates mostly from studies of rod- or crescent-shaped bacteria. Here we reveal that Deinococcus radiodurans, a relatively large spherical bacterium with a multipartite genome, constitutes a valuable system for the study of the nucleoid in cocci. Using advanced microscopy, we show that D. radiodurans undergoes coordinated morphological changes at both the cellular and nucleoid level as it progresses through its cell cycle. The nucleoid is highly condensed, but also surprisingly dynamic, adopting multiple configurations and presenting an unusual arrangement in which oriC loci are radially distributed around clustered ter sites maintained at the cell centre. Single-particle tracking and fluorescence recovery after photobleaching studies of the histone-like HU protein suggest that its loose binding to DNA may contribute to this remarkable plasticity. These findings demonstrate that nucleoid organization is complex and tightly coupled to cell cycle progression in this organism.

Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-11725-5

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