2. Academic Validation
  3. Widespread photosynthesis reaction centre barrel proteins are necessary for haloarchaeal cell division

Widespread photosynthesis reaction centre barrel proteins are necessary for haloarchaeal cell division

  • Nat Microbiol. 2024 Mar;9(3):712-726. doi: 10.1038/s41564-024-01615-y.
Shan Zhao # 1,  Kira S Makarova # 2,  Wenchao Zheng 1,  Le Zhan 1,  Qianqian Wan 1,  Yafei Liu 1,  Han Gong 1,  Mart Krupovic 3,  Joe Lutkenhaus 4,  Xiangdong Chen 5,  Eugene V Koonin 6,  Shishen Du 7
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 Department of Microbiology, Hubei Key Laboratory of Cell Homeostasis, College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China.
  • 2 National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.
  • 3 Institut Pasteur, Université Paris Cité, Archaeal Virology Unit, Paris, France.
  • 4 Department of Microbiology, Molecular Genetics and Immunology, University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, KS, USA.
  • 5 State Key Laboratory of Virology, College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China.
  • 6 National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA. koonin@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
  • 7 Department of Microbiology, Hubei Key Laboratory of Cell Homeostasis, College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China. ssdu@whu.edu.cn.
  • # Contributed equally.
PMID: 38443574 DOI: 10.1038/s41564-024-01615-y
Abstract

Cell division is fundamental to all cellular life. Most archaea depend on either the prokaryotic tubulin homologue FtsZ or the endosomal sorting complex required for transport for division but neither system has been robustly characterized. Here, we show that three of the four photosynthesis reaction centre barrel domain proteins of Haloferax volcanii (renamed cell division proteins B1/2/3 (CdpB1/2/3)) play important roles in cell division. CdpB1 interacts directly with the FtsZ membrane anchor SepF and is essential for cell division, whereas deletion of cdpB2 and cdpB3 causes a major and a minor division defect, respectively. Orthologues of CdpB proteins are also involved in cell division in other haloarchaea, indicating a conserved function of these proteins. Phylogenetic analysis shows that photosynthetic reaction centre barrel proteins are widely distributed among archaea and appear to be central to cell division in most if not all archaea.

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