News
Stability through protein reservoirs
7 May 2025
Biophysicists figure out how bacteria form robust patterns despite changing environmental conditions and fluctuating protein concentrations.
Biological patterns are essential for many processes of life. During cell division, for example, the distribution of certain proteins in the cell determines the location where the parent cell splits. An important model for biological pattern formation is the bacterium E. coli, in which specific Min proteins oscillate rhythmically back and forth between the cell poles, guiding symmetric cell division. An unanswered question hitherto has been how bacteria manage to keep pattern formation stable even though the protein composition in the cell can fluctuate due to changing environmental conditions.