2008/08/06 by Hui Wang, Ned S. Wingreen, Ranjan Mukhopadhyay
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Fluorescence Microscopy Techniques #Bacterial Genetics and Biotechnology #Protein Structure and Dynamics #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech #q-bio.CB #q-bio.SC
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.101.218101
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 218101 (2008) · 5 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2008/08/06 · openalex publication_date 2008/11/20 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Chemotaxis receptors in E. coli form clusters at the cell poles and also laterally along the cell body, and this clustering plays an important role in signal transduction. Recently, experiments using fluorescence imaging have shown that, during cell growth, lateral clusters form at positions approximately periodically spaced along the cell body. In this Letter, we demonstrate within a lattice model that such spatial organization could arise spontaneously from a stochastic nucleation mechanism. The same mechanism may explain the recent observation of periodic aggregates of misfolded proteins in E. coli.