Systems Biochemistry of Bacterial Division

Our research program integrates biochemistry, biophysics, and bottom-up synthetic biology to reconstruct minimal bacterial division machineries from its molecular building blocks in controlled cell-like environments. This effort, which is framed on the quest of building synthetic cells from scratch, will contribute to our understanding of how cells divide and will provide new horizons for biotechnological and biomedical applications.

For more details, please see the personal lab web page at https://mastermcib.wixsite.com/grlabcib

• We aim at understanding the molecular mechanisms responsible for the biochemical organization of the bacterial division machinery (the divisome). The purpose is to achieve a quantitative description of how FtsZ (the central element of the divisome in most bacteria) and the proteins modulating division ring stability work together as an integrated system of multiple interactions to assemble the functional molecular engine that drives cytokinesis. This biochemical information will contribute to defining more precise conditions to reconstruct different combinations of divisome subsets and to test their functional organization in minimal membrane systems and cell-like containers, as vesicles and droplets produced by microfluidics.

• Synthetic systems can be devised to mimic elements of the intracellular complexity (as excluded volume effects due to natural crowding, surface interactions, and macromolecular condensation resulting from biologically regulated liquid-liquid phase separation) in media of known and controllable composition.

• This integrative approach has allowed us to demonstrate that FtsZ, together with its nucleoid-associated inhibitor SlmA, assembles into dynamic condensates driven by phase separation in crowded cell-like conditions. Our findings suggest that phase-separated biomolecular condensation may also help to organize intracellular space in bacteria.