Jones L J, Carballido-López R, Errington J
Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3RE, United Kingdom.
Cell. 2001 Mar 23;104(6):913-22. doi: 10.1016/s0092-8674(01)00287-2.
In the absence of an overt cytoskeleton, the external cell wall of bacteria has traditionally been assumed to be the primary determinant of cell shape. In the Gram-positive bacterium Bacillus subtilis, two related genes, mreB and mbl, were shown to be required for different aspects of cell morphogenesis. Subcellular localization of the MreB and Mbl proteins revealed that each forms a distinct kind of filamentous helical structure lying close to the cell surface. The distribution of the proteins in different species of bacteria, and the similarity of their sequence to eukaryotic actins, suggest that the MreB-like proteins have a cytoskeletal, actin-like role in bacterial cell morphogenesis.
在没有明显细胞骨架的情况下，细菌的外部细胞壁传统上被认为是细胞形状的主要决定因素。在革兰氏阳性细菌枯草芽孢杆菌中，两个相关基因mreB和mbl被证明是细胞形态发生不同方面所必需的。MreB和Mbl蛋白的亚细胞定位表明，它们各自形成一种独特的丝状螺旋结构，位于细胞表面附近。这些蛋白质在不同细菌物种中的分布，以及它们与真核肌动蛋白序列的相似性，表明MreB样蛋白在细菌细胞形态发生中具有细胞骨架样、类似肌动蛋白的作用。
