The MinC protein is one of three proteins in the
Min system encoded by the ''minB''
operon and which is required to generate pole to pole oscillations prior to
bacterial cell division as a means of specifying the midzone of the cell. This function is achieved by preventing the formation of the
divisome Z-ring around the poles.
History
When initially discovered in ''
E.coli
''Escherichia coli'' (),Wells, J. C. (2000) Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. Harlow ngland Pearson Education Ltd. also known as ''E. coli'' (), is a Gram-negative, facultative anaerobic, rod-shaped, coliform bacterium of the genus ''Esche ...
'', MinC was believed to form a stable cap by binding with
MinD
The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...
at the bacterial caps in a stable and static manner, thereby specifying the mid-zone of the cell by lower-concentration or lack of this complex in that region, alleviating inhibition of Z-ring formation. However, Raskin & de Boer applied live-cell imaging with
GFP GFP may refer to:
Organisations
* Gaelic Football Provence, a French Gaelic Athletic Association club
* Geheime Feldpolizei, the German secret military police during the Second World War
* French Group for the Study of Polymers and their Applicat ...
fusion proteins to reveal a dynamic interaction of the Min proteins, demonstrating that MinC and MinD, with the essential help of
MinE
Mine, mines, miners or mining may refer to:
Extraction or digging
* Miner, a person engaged in mining or digging
*Mining, extraction of mineral resources from the ground through a mine
Grammar
*Mine, a first-person English possessive pronoun
...
,
actually rapidly oscillate between the two poles in a non-static manner.
MinC is found in diverse genera, including
Neisseria,
Bacillus, and
Synechocystis
''Synechocystis'' is a genus of unicellular, freshwater cyanobacteria in the family Merismopediaceae. It includes a strain, ''Synechocystis'' sp. PCC 6803, which is a well studied model organism.
Like all cyanobacteria, ''Synechocystis'' b ...
, but is absent in an equally wide assortment of genera (e.g.
Caulobacter
''Caulobacter'' is a genus of Gram-negative bacteria in the class Alphaproteobacteria. Its best-known member is ''Caulobacter crescentus'', an organism ubiquitous in freshwater lakes and rivers; many members of the genus are specialized to Trophi ...
,
Mycobacterium
''Mycobacterium'' is a genus of over 190 species in the phylum Actinomycetota, assigned its own family, Mycobacteriaceae. This genus includes pathogens known to cause serious diseases in mammals, including tuberculosis ('' M. tuberculosis'') and ...
). Many bacteria that lack MinC carry alternative proteins that can position their Z-ring.
Function
MinC is known to dimerize
and functions as an
FtsZ protein inhibitor, antagonizing its structure assembly when in a high enough concentration. The protein has the ability to disassemble the
ZapA, ZapB and ZipA proteins which preferentially bind to the FtsZ scaffold protein and which are needed to initiate cell division.
Concentrations of MinC are lowest at the mid-zone of bacterial cells, thereby permitting septum formation and scaffold assembly at the cellular mid-zone since the Min System proteins (MinCDE) are lowest in concentration in this region, alleviating the physical inhibition on the proteins required to initiate division.
References
{{Reflist
Bacterial proteins