The bacterial cytoplasm has glass-like properties and is fluidized by metabolic activity
By Bradley R. Parry, Ivan V. Surovtsev, M. Cabeen, C. O’Hern, E. Dufresne, C. Jacobs‐Wagner. Cell, 2013
754 citations recorded by the source corpus.
SUMMARY The physical nature of the bacterial cytoplasm is poorly understood even though it determines cytoplasmic dynamics and hence cellular physiology and behavior. Through single-particle tracking of protein filaments, plasmids, storage granules and foreign particles of different sizes, we find that the bacterial cytoplasm displays properties characteristic of glass-forming liquids and changes from liquid-like to solid-like in a component size-dependent fashion. As a result, the motion of cytoplasmic components becomes disproportionally constrained with increasing size. Remarkably, cellular metabolism fluidizes the cytoplasm, allowing larger components to escape their local environment and explore larger regions of the cytoplasm. Consequently, cytoplasmic fluidity and dynamics dramatically change as cells shift between metabolically active and dormant states in response to fluctuating environments. Our findings provide insight into bacterial dormancy and have broad implications to our understanding of bacterial physiology as the glassy behavior of the cytoplasm impacts all intracellular processes involving large components.
Subfields: Genetics, Molecular Biology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7f38e81f151e346c5e60383f8cc883d47efb5935
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In Genetics
In Molecular Biology
- Yongdae Shin
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- Diana M. Mitrea
- D. Dormann
- Vladimir N Uversky
Citations in the corpus
- Liquid phase condensation in cell physiology and disease (2017, background): “However, global ATP depletion influences material states of the entire cytoplasm (113, 114), potentially through its functions as a solubilizing intracellular hydrotrope (115), further underscoring the multifaceted role of ATP in intracellular fluidization.”
- Coexisting liquid phases underlie nucleolar sub-compartments (2016, positive): “process known as ‘‘active diffusion’’ (Brangwynne et al., 2011; Parry et al., 2014; Kroschwald et al., 2015).”
- Liquid-Liquid Phase Separation in Disease. (2019, background): “There now is increasing evidence that dormancy in bacteria and fungi is associated with a phase transition in which large parts of the cytoplasm solidify (111, 122).”