PREreviews of “MraZ is a transcriptional inhibitor of cell division in Bacillus subtilis” | PREreview

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MraZ is a transcriptional inhibitor of cell division in Bacillus subtilis

by Maria L. White, Abigail Hough-Neidig, Sebastian J. Khan, and Prahathees J. Eswara

Posted: February 10, 2022
Server: bioRxiv
DOI: 10.1101/2022.02.09.479790

Abstract

The bacterial division and cell wall (dcw) cluster is a highly conserved region of the genome which encodes several essential cell division factors including the central divisome protein FtsZ. Understanding the regulation of this region is key to our overall understanding of the division process. mraZ is found at the 5’ end of the dcw cluster and previous studies have described MraZ as a sequence-specific DNA binding protein. In this article, we investigate MraZ to elucidate its role in Bacillus subtilis. Through our investigation, we demonstrate that increased levels of MraZ result in lethal filamentation due to repression of its own operon (mraZ-mraW-ftsL-pbpB). We observe rescue of filamentation upon decoupling ftsL expression, but not other genes in the operon, from MraZ control. Furthermore, through timelapse microscopy we were able to identify that overexpression of mraZ, results in de-condensation of the FtsZ ring (Z-ring). This is likely due to depletion of FtsL, and thus, we believe the precise role of FtsL is likely in Z-ring maturation and promotion of subsequent treadmilling. Our data suggests that regulation of the mra operon may be an alternative way for cells to quickly arrest cytokinesis potentially during entry into stationary phase and in the event of DNA replication arrest.

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2 Rapid PREreviews

by Aditya Rajput and Madison Dresler

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Aggregated Rapid PREreviews
Question	Yes	Unsure	N/A	No
Are the findings novel?	100%	0%	0%	0%
Are the results likely to lead to future research?	100%	0%	0%	0%
Is sufficient detail provided to allow reproduction of the study?	50%	50%	0%	0%
Are the methods and statistics appropriate for the analysis?	50%	50%	0%	0%
Are the principal conclusions supported by the data and analysis?	100%	0%	0%	0%
Does the manuscript discuss limitations?	50%	0%	50%	0%
Have the authors adequately discussed ethical concerns?	0%	50%	50%	0%
Does the manuscript include new data?	100%	0%	0%	0%
Are the data used in the manuscript available?	0%	0%	50%	50%
Is the code used in the manuscript available?	0%	0%	100%	0%
Would you recommend this manuscript to others?	100%	0%	0%	0%
Do you recommend this manuscript for peer review?	100%	0%	0%	0%

2 PREreviews

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PREreview by Aditya Rajput

Authored by Aditya Rajput

This study elucidates a transcriptional regulatory perspective to the cell cycle arrest and control in Bacillus subtilis.
Using IPTG inducible MraZ, it was shown the overproduction of this gene produces distinctly long bacteria (Fig. 1 A, C and D) which strongly suggests a cell division arrest.…

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PREreview by Madison Dresler et al.

Authored by Madison Dresler, Valentina Shrum, Rossi Wang, Siyu Yin, and Rebeccah Lijek

Review of: White, M, et al.. February 10, 2022. “MraZ is a transcriptional inhibitor of cell division in Bacillus subtilis.” bioRxiv. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.02.09.479790]
This review was written collaboratively by undergraduates at Mount Holyoke College (MA, USA) who selected this…

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