Cell Division in Bacteria

Research Interest:

Increasing bacterial resistance to the existing antibiotics is emerging as one of the major challenge to human health. Cell division is an essential but a complex process in all the living organisms. Bacterial cell division has always been an attraction for the development of antibacterial agents. A greater understanding of bacteria cell division will be highly helpful for the discovery of novel antibacterial agents.

In E. coli cell division is performed by a coordinated assembly of more than a dozen of different proteins, which form a complex structure known as divisome. Assembly of divisome is initiated by the localization of FtsZ at the division site. FtsZ, a bacterial homolog of tubulin, is highly conserved among the prokaryotes. It polymerizes to form protofilaments and bundles that bind to the inner membrane with the help of membrane anchor proteins FtsA or ZipA, to form a ring like structure known as Z ring. The downstream proteins then get recruited to the Z ring in a hierarchy and make it dynamic structure, divisome. The final role of the divisome is to constrict the membrane and form a septum at the division site. Inhibition of the divisome leads to inhibition of the cell division and thus cell division has been considered as an attractive target for the development of antibacterial agents. We are interested to investigate the interactions among the cell division proteins and target these interactions for the discovery of novel antibacterial agents.

Educational Qualifications: 

2011-till date   Ramalingaswami Fellow Scientist

                        Inistitute of Life Sciences, Bhubaneswar

2006-2011       Post-doctoral Fellow, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston

2001-2006       Ph.D., School of Biosciences and Bioengineering, IIT Bombay

1997-1999       M.Sc. (Organic Chemistry), Ravenshaw College, Cuttack

Research publications:

1.      Beuria, T.K. and Margolin, W. Bacterial Cytokinesis: FzlA Frizzes FtsZ Filaments for Fission Force. Curr. Biol. 2010, 20:R1024-7.

2.      Tonthat, N.K., Arold, S.T., Pickering, B., Van Dyke, M.W., Liang, S., Lu, Y., Beuria, T.K., Margolin, W., and Schumacher, M.A. Molecular mechanism by which the SlmA nucleoid occlusion factor keeps cytokinesis in check. EMBO J. 2010, 2010 Nov 26. [Epub ahead of print]

3.      Beuria TK, Mullapudi S, Mileykovskaya E, Sadasivam M, Dowhan W and Margolin W. Adenine nucleotide-dependent regulation of assembly of bacterial tubulin-like FtsZ by a hypermorph of bacterial actin-like FtsA. J. Biol. Chem. 2009 284:14079-86

4.      Beuria TK, Singh P, Surolia A, and Panda D. Promoting assembly and bundling of FtsZ as a strategy to inhibit bacterial cell division: a new approach for developing novel antibacterial drugs. Biochem J. 2009 423(1):61-69

5.      Jaiswal R, Beuria TK, Mohan R, Mahajan SK, Panda D. Totarol inhibits bacterial cytokinesis by perturbing the assembly dynamics of FtsZ. Biochemistry 2007, 46: 4211-20

6.      Corbin BD, Wang Y, Beuria TK, Margolin W. Interaction between cell division proteins FtsE and FtsZ. J. Bacteriol. 2007, 189: 3026-35

7.      Beuria TK, Shah JH, Santra MK, Kumar V, Panda D. Effects of pH and ionic strength on the assembly and bundling of FtsZ protofilaments: a possible role of electrostatic interactions in the bundling of protofilaments. Int. J. Biol. Macromol. 2006, 40: 30-9

8.      Beuria TK, Santra MK, Panda D. Sanguinarine Blocks Cytokinesis in Bacteria by Inhibiting FtsZ Assembly and Bundling. Biochemistry 2005, 44: 16584-93

9.      Mukherjee A, Santra MK, Beuria TK, Panda D. A natural osmolyte trimethylamine N-oxide promotes assembly and bundling of the bacterial cell division protein, FtsZ and counteracts the denaturing effects of urea. FEBS J. 2005, 272: 2760-72

10.  Santra MK, Beuria TK, Banerjee A, Panda D. Ruthenium red-induced bundling of bacterial cell division protein, FtsZ. J Biol Chem. 2004, 279: 25959-65

11.  Beuria TK, Krishnakumar SS, Sahar S, Singh N, Gupta K, Meshram M, Panda D. Glutamate-induced assembly of bacterial cell division protein FtsZ. J Biol Chem. 2003, 278: 3735-41

Academic Honors and Awards:

2011    Ramalingaswami fellowship from Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, Govt. of India

2004 - 2006     Awarded Senior Research Fellowship sponsored by CSIR, India.

2002 - 2004     Awarded Junior Research Fellowship sponsored by CSIR, India.