The New Bacterial Cell Biology: Moving Parts and Subcellular Architecture

Recent advances have demonstrated that bacterial cells have an exquisitely organized and dynamic subcellular architecture. Like their eukaryotic counterparts, bacteria employ a full complement of cytoskeletal proteins, localize proteins and DNA to specific subcellular addresses at specific times, and use intercellular signaling to coordinate multicellular events. The striking conceptual and molecular similarities between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cell biology thus make bacteria powerful model systems for studying fundamental cellular questions.