Single-gene tuning of Caulobacter cell cycle period and noise, swarming motility, and surface adhesion

Sensor histidine kinases underlie the regulation of a range of physiological processes in bacterial cells, from chemotaxis to cell division. In the gram-negative bacterium Caulobacter crescentus, the membrane-bound histidine kinase, DivJ, is a polar-localized regulator of cell cycle progression and development. We show that DivJ localizes to the cell pole through a dynamic diffusion and capture mechanism rather than by active localization. Analysis of single C. crescentus cells in microfluidic culture demonstrates that controlled expression of divJ permits facile tuning of both the mean and noise of the cell division period. Simulations of the cell cycle that use a simplified protein interaction network capture previously measured oscillatory protein profiles, and recapitulate the experimental observation that deletion of divJ increases the cell cycle period and noise. We further demonstrate that surface adhesion and swarming motility of C. crescentus in semi-solid media can also be tuned by divJ expression. We propose a model in which pleiotropic control of polar cell development by the DivJ-DivK-PleC signaling pathway underlies divJ-dependent tuning of cell swarming and adhesion behaviors.