Force generation by a dynamic Z-ring in <i>Escherichia coli</i> cell division
Bibliographic record
Abstract
FtsZ, a bacterial homologue of tubulin, plays a central role in bacterial cell division. It is the first of many proteins recruited to the division site to form the Z-ring, a dynamic structure that recycles on the time scale of seconds and is required for division to proceed. FtsZ has been recently shown to form rings inside tubular liposomes and to constrict the liposome membrane without the presence of other proteins, particularly molecular motors that appear to be absent from the bacterial proteome. Here, we propose a mathematical model for the dynamic turnover of the Z-ring and for its ability to generate a constriction force. Force generation is assumed to derive from GTP hydrolysis, which is known to induce curvature in FtsZ filaments. We find that this transition to a curved state is capable of generating a sufficient force to drive cell-wall invagination in vivo and can also explain the constriction seen in the in vitro liposome experiments. Our observations resolve the question of how FtsZ might accomplish cell division despite the highly dynamic nature of the Z-ring and the lack of molecular motors.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".