@felixrl_ took on a ~50-yr-old mystery in #Staph aureus cell biology and came out on top! Check out his paper on how #Staphylococcus aureus chooses its cell division plane, how it forms clusters, and why all this matters during infection.

RT @EvolvedBiofilm: See our new (data) preprint on the 121 sporulating Bacillales genomes by Lijie Song and @LasseJDNielsen1 et al a @cemis….

RT @jivarahasya: Extracellular Calcineurin-like phosphoesterases foster and signal altruistic behavior in bacteria. This new work with @Ram….

RT @FabriceJPierre: Busy day in the lab! @JoVEJournal is shooting a video on a methods paper that my trainee (@Sarah_Poirier) and I publish….

RT @MohiniB1: Excited to share my postdoctoral work on novel aspects of S. aureus skin infection pathogenesis, out as pre-print. This was s….

RT @jivarahasya: From anti-invader immunity to the cytoskeleton: the tale of McrB proteins.This work with @RamamurthiLab @ProteinVerse sho….

RT @foster_lab: We are very excited to announce our latest work on how MRSA conquers antibiotics. We show that high-level resistance to met….

RT @chienlab: Since we only had a month to post this, we got permission to extend priority review to Nov 15! So send us your applications!….

RT @JWVeening: Checkout @Bevika2 preprint! She used CRISPRi-seq to determine antibiotic-stress signatures, specifically of pneumococci trea….

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RT @BrianKCoombes: Every 6 seconds, someone dies from an antibiotic-resistant infection. Today, on day 242 of the year, over 3.2 million p….

Come join a fun group of bacteriologists @IRPatNIH near DC!.

RT @DrPhilipAdams: I am excited to announce several post-doc positions studying gene regulation and cell biology of spirochetes are availab….

RT @NatureMicrobiol: 🦠➗OUT NOW - PcdA promotes division plane selection in #Staph by @RamamurthiLab @felixrl_ @braf_phd @ProteinVerse @Aman….

RT @Subtillery: Who is excited for #Subtillery2024? Lift off in T-minus 60 mins!

A really fun collaborative effort with @braf_phd ,@ProteinVerse , @cytomotive , @MissiakasLab , @jivarahasya.

So, what's the point of this growth pattern? Without PcdA, #Staph fails to grow as clusters and exhibits a defect in the ability to persist in kidney lesions during infection in a mouse model. We speculate that clustered growth defends S. aureus against host immune attacks.

That's right-- it's a(nother) POSITIVE FtsZ placement factor in bacteria (as opposed to the well-studied Min system in E. coli, which restricts FtsZ placement).

Short answer: as the normally spherical #Staph grows, it slightly elongates. The protein DivIVA recognizes these "poles" and localizes there. DivIVA recruits an AAA+ ATPase named "PcdA" (previously of unknown function), which then recruits FtsZ to the correct site.

Daughter cells of the spherical #Staph "remember" the cell division plane that the parent cell used, and divide roughly perpendicular to that plane. This leads to the characteristic grape-cluster-like growth pattern of this bacterium. How in the world does this work???.