Cell division, aging, and stress recovery triggers spatial reorganization of cellular components in the cytoplasm, including membrane bound organelles, with molecular changes in their compositions and structures. However, it is not clear how these events are coordinated and how they integrate with regulation of molecular crowding. We use the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model system to study these questions using recent progress in optical fluorescence microscopy and crowding sensing probe technology. We used a Förster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) based sensor, illuminated by confocal microscopy for high throughput analyses and Slimfield microscopy for single-molecule resolution, to quantify molecular crowding. We determine crowding in response to cellular growth of both mother and daughter cells, in addition to osmotic stress, and reveal hot spots of crowding across the bud neck in the burgeoning daughter cell. This crowding might be rationalized by the packing of inherited material, like the vacuole, from mother cells. We discuss recent advances in understanding the role of crowding in cellular regulation and key current challenges and conclude by presenting our recent advances in optimizing FRET-based measurements of crowding whilst simultaneously imaging a third color, which can be used as a marker that labels organelle membranes. Our approaches can be combined with synchronised cell populations to increase experimental throughput and correlate molecular crowding information with different stages in the cell cycle.
The RecA protein and RecBCD complex are key bacterial components for the maintenance and repair of DNA. RecBCD is a helicase-nuclease that uses homologous recombination to resolve double-stranded DNA breaks. It also facilitates coating of single-stranded DNA with RecA to form RecA filaments, a vital step in the double-stranded break DNA repair pathway. However, questions remain about the mechanistic roles of RecA and RecBCD in live cells. Here, we use millisecond super-resolved fluorescence microscopy to pinpoint the spatial localization of fluorescent reporters of RecA or RecB at physiological levels of expression in individual live Escherichia coli cells. By introducing the DNA cross-linker mitomycin C, we induce DNA damage and quantify the resulting steady state changes in stoichiometry, cellular protein copy number and molecular mobilities of RecA and RecB. We find that both proteins accumulate in molecular hotspots to effect repair, resulting in RecA stoichiometries equivalent to several hundred molecules that assemble largely in dimeric subunits before DNA damage, but form periodic subunits of approximately 3–4 molecules within mature filaments of several thousand molecules. Unexpectedly, we find that the physiologically predominant forms of RecB are not only rapidly diffusing monomers, but slowly diffusing dimers.
The RecA protein and RecBCD complex are key bacterial components for the maintenance and repair of DNA, RecBCD a helicase-nuclease that uses homologous recombination to resolve double-stranded DNA breaks and also facilitating decoration of single-stranded DNA with RecA to form RecA filaments, a vital step in the double-stranded break DNA repair pathway. However, questions remain about the mechanistic roles of RecA and RecBCD in live cells. Here, we use millisecond super-resolved fluorescence microscopy to pinpoint the spatial localization of fluorescent reporters of RecA and the RecB at physiological levels of expression in individual live Escherichia coli cells. By introducing the DNA crosslinker mitomycin C, we induce DNA damage and quantify the resulting changes in stoichiometry, copy number and molecular mobilities of RecA and RecB. We find that both proteins accumulate in molecular hotspots to effect repair, resulting in RecA filamental stoichiometries equivalent to several hundred molecules that act largely in RecA tetramers before DNA damage, but switch to approximately hexameric subunits when mature filaments are formed. Unexpectedly, we find that the physiologically predominant form of RecB is a dimer.
Cell division, aging, and stress recovery triggers the spatial reorganization of cellular components in the cytoplasm, but also of membrane bound organelles, with molecular changes in their compositions and structures. However, it is not clear how these events are coordinated and how they integrate with regulation of molecular crowding. We use the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model eukaryotic unicellular organism to study these questions using recent progress in optical fluorescence microscopy and crowding sensing probe technology. We used a Förster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) based sensor, illuminated by confocal microscopy for high throughput analyses and Slimfield microscopy for single-molecule resolution, to quantify molecular crowding. We determine crowding in response to growth and osmotic stress, and its dependence on mother and daughter cells during division, and find unexpectedly the presence of hot spots of crowding across the bud neck in the burgeoning daughter cell, which might be rationalized by the packing of inherited material, like the vacuole, from mother cells. We discuss recent advances in understanding the role of crowding in cellular regulation and key current challenges, and conclude by presenting our recent advances in optimizing FRET-based measurements of crowding whilst simultaneously imaging a third colour, which can be used as an organelle marker and to readout membrane morphology. Our approaches can be combined with synchronised cell populations to increase experimental throughput and correlate molecular crowding information with different stages in the cell cycle.
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