Browsing by Author "Erickson, Harold P"

The bacterial protein FtsZ plays a vital role in cytokinesis in prokaryotes as it polymerizes to form an FtsZ ring (Z ring) at the division septum midcell. FtsZ exhibits a GTP hydrolysis activity and attempts have been made to model the kinetics of this process. There is a major discrepancy, however, over the concentration of GTP needed for activity. The dissociation constant (KD) between wild-type FtsZ protein and GTP was measured to be 30 nM using isothermal titration calorimetry. In contrast, several research groups have reported that GTP hydrolysis required GTP concentrations in the millimolar range. They used Michaelis-Menten kinetics to model the GTP concentration dependence and obtained an apparent binding constant (Km) in the range of 300-1,000 µM GTP. Km and KD are not identical measures of binding given that they differ by the kinetic constant governing catalysis, kcat, but we suggest that a five order of magnitude difference between the values is unprecedented and this was a problem that needed investigating.

My overall goal in this work has been to perform a comprehensive in vitro study of the FtsZ GTP hydrolysis activity using an enzyme-coupled regenerating system. With this system rates of GTP hydrolysis by FtsZ are obtained spectrophotometrically. I have confirmed for wild-type FtsZ that GTP hydrolysis rates show little to no dependence on GTP concentrations in the range of 50-3,000 µM, contradicting the high values of Km reported in some previous studies. Since we have failed to reproduce the high Km with three different preparations of FtsZ protein, we cannot propose a definitive mechanism for the previous results.

I also measured the GTP hydrolysis of several mutants of FtsZ: E238A, L169R, and FtsZ84 (G105S). I investigated each of these mutants to see if they had a high apparent Km. FtsZ84 had a low overall hydrolysis rate, but did show a large increase in hydrolysis rates when GTP was increased from 50-3,000 µM. We hypothesize that a lower affinity for GTP is not a Michaelis-Menten Km, but likely a reflection of a weak binding of GTP by FtsZ84, giving KD in the millimolar range.

The tubulin homolog FtsZ provides the cytoskeletal framework for bacterial cell division. FtsZ is an essential protein for bacterial cell division, and is the only protein necessary for Z-ring assembly and constriction force generation in liposomes in vitro. The work presented here utilizes structural and genomic analysis methods to investigate FtsZ function for cell division with three separate questions: (1) What is the function of the C-terminal linker peptide in FtsZ? (2) Are there interacting proteins other than those of the divisome that facilitate FtsZ function? (3) Do lateral contact sites exist between protofilaments in the Z ring, resulting in an organized Z-ring substructure?

The FtsZ protein has an ~50 aa linker between the protofilament-forming globular domain and the C-terminal (Ct) membrane-tethering peptide. This Ct linker is widely divergent across bacterial species, and has been thought to be an intrinsically disordered peptide (IDP). We have made chimeras where we have swapped the Escherichia coli IDP for Ct linkers from other bacteria, and even for an unrelated IDP from human &alpha-adducin. Most of these substitutions allowed for normal cell division, suggesting that sequence of the IDP did not matter -any IDP appears to work (with some exceptions). Length, however, was important: IDPs shorter than 39 or longer than 89 aa's had compromised function. We conclude that the Ct linker of FtsZ functions as a flexible tether between the globular domain of FtsZ in the protofilament, and its attachment to FtsA and ZipA at the membrane. As a worm-like-chain, the Ct linker will function as a stiff entropic spring linking the constricting protofilaments to the membrane.

Previous work from our laboratory found that mutant and foreign FtsZ that do not normally function for cell division can function upon acquisition of a second site suppressor mutation, somewhere in the E. coli genome. We expect that some mutant or foreign FtsZ are partially functional for division in E. coli. As such, these FtsZ require another mutation that further enables their function. These suppressing mutations may reveal proteins interacting with FtsZ and the divisome, that have previously been unknown. In the present study, we have identified, via whole genome re-sequencing, single nucleotide polymorphisms that allow 11 different foreign and mutant FtsZ proteins to function for cell division. While we see a trend toward mutations in genes related to general metabolism functions in the cell, we have also identified mutations in two genes, ispA and nlpI, that may be interacting more directly with the cell division mechanism.

Finally, we have devised a screen to identify mutations in FtsZ that may be involved in lateral bonding between protofilaments. There are presently two proposed models of FtsZ substructure: the scattered or the ribbon model. A major difference between these models is that the scattered model proposed no interaction between adjacent protofilaments in the Z ring, while the ribbon model suggests that adjacent protofilaments are bonded laterally to create an organized substructure of aligned protofilaments. Our screen was designed to identify complementary surface-exposed residues that may be involved in lateral bonding. We initially identified two lateral contact candidate residues: R174, and E250 and mutated them to abrogate FtsZ function. We also mutated L272, which is known to make contacts across the protofilament interface, to look for compensating mutations in these contact residues. Using the screen, we identified a number of secondary mutations in FtsZ that can complement these initial loss-of-function mutations. While this screen has not yielded strong candidates for lateral bonding partners, it has emerged as a high-throughput method for screening large libraries of mutant FtsZ proteins in order to identify compensating mutation pairs.

Bacterial cell division is tightly coupled to the dynamic behavior of FtsZ, a tubulin homolog. Recent experimental work \textit{in vitro} and \textit{in vivo} has attributed FtsZ’s assembly dynamics to treadmilling, where subunits add to the bottom and dissociate from the top of protofilaments. However, the molecular mechanisms producing treadmilling have yet to be characterized and quantified. We have developed a Monte Carlo model for FtsZ assembly that explains treadmilling and assembly nucleation by the same mechanisms. A key element of the model is a conformational change from R (relaxed), which is highly favored for monomers, to T (tense), which is favored for subunits in a protofilament. This model was created in MATLAB. Kinetic parameters were converted to probabilities of execution during a single, small time step. These were used to stochastically determine FtsZ dynamics. Our model is able to accurately describe the results of several \textit{in vitro} and \textit{in vivo} studies for a variety of FtsZ flavors. With standard conditions, the model FtsZ polymerized and produced protofilaments that treadmilled at 24 nm/s, hydrolyzed GTP at 2.4 to 3.2 GTP min\textsuperscript{-1} FtsZ\textsuperscript{-1}, and had an average length of 30 to 60 subunits, all similar to experimental results. Adding a bottom capper resulted in shorter protofilaments and higher GTPase, similar to the effect of the known the bottom capper protein MciZ. The model could match nucleation kinetics of several flavors of FtsZ using the same parameters as treadmilling and varying only the R to T transition of monomers.

Bacterial tubulin homolog FtsZ assembles straight protofilaments (pfs) that form the scaffold of the cytokinetic Z ring. These pfs can adopt a curved conformation forming a miniring or spiral tube 24 nm in diameter. Tubulin pfs also have a curved conformation, forming 42 nm tubulin rings. We have previously provided evidence that FtsZ generates a constriction force by switching from straight pfs to the curved conformation, generating a bending force on the membrane. In the simplest model the membrane tether, which exits from the C terminus of the globular FtsZ, would have to be on the outside of the curved pf. However, it is well established that tubulin rings have the C terminus on the inside of the ring. Could FtsZ and tubulin rings have the opposite curvature? In the present study we explored the direction of curvature of FtsZ rings by fusing large protein tags to the N or C terminus of the FtsZ globular domain. FtsZ with a protein tag on the N terminus did not assemble tubes. This was expected if the N terminus is on the inside, because the protein tags are too big to fit in the interior of the tube. FtsZ with C-terminal tags assembled normal tubes, consistent with the C terminus on the outside. The FN extension was not visible in negative stain, but thin section EM gave definitive evidence that the C-terminal tag was on the outside of the tubes. This has interesting implications for the evolution of tubulin. It seems likely that tubulin began with the curvature of FtsZ, which would have resulted in pfs curving toward the interior of a disassembling MT. Evolution not only eliminated this undesirable curvature, but managed to reverse direction to produce the outward curving rings, which is useful for pulling chromosomes.