Mrinmayee Bapat

Many rod-shaped bacteria rely on a protein known as MreB to acquire and maintain their characteristic three-dimensional structure (Jones et al., 2001; van den Ent et al., 2001; Domínguez-Escobar et al., 2011; Garner et al., 2011; van Teeffelen et al., 2011). Like its eukaryotic homolog, the actin protein, MreB filaments are formed of small units that polymerise into two paired strands.

Abstract Spiroplasma is a cell-wall less, helical bacterium possessing a cytoskeletal ribbon consisting Fibril and 5 MreB paralogs. In absence of any information regarding the filament interface of Fibril, a cytoskeleton protein of novel fold, multiple short constructs of Fibril were designed to identify minimal domains required for polymerization. Purification trials of these short constructs resulted in insoluble protein products.