You Are What You Eat: Metabolic Control of Bacterial Division

Abstract

Fluctuations in nutrient availability are a fact of life for bacterial cells in the 'wild'. To survive and compete, bacteria must rapidly modulate cell-cycle processes to accommodate changing nutritional conditions and concomitant changes in cell growth. Our understanding of how this is achieved has been transformed in recent years, with cellular metabolism emerging as a central player. Several metabolic enzymes, in addition to their normal catalytic functions, have been shown to directly modulate cell-cycle processes in response to changing nutrient levels. Here we focus on cell division, the final event in the bacterial cell cycle, and discuss recent compelling evidence connecting division regulation to nutritional status and metabolic activity.

Keywords: FtsZ; cell cycle; cell division; metabolism; moonlighting proteins; nutritional regulation.