Forward genetic dissection of bacterial polarisome in Caulobacter crescentus

Caulobacter crescentus is a major model organism to study prokaryotic asymmetric cell division. In C. crescentus, the signal transduction pathways, localized to the opposite cell poles, dictate the cell fate by coordinating cellular differentiation and cell cycle progression. Therefore, in order to have a successful cellular proliferation, polar differentiation is highly important. Polarity is maintained by polar landmark proteins like the polar organizing protein PopZ, which plays an important role in the localization of various proteins. In this thesis, we identified two new PopZ interacting proteins, PlrA and PlrB, by exploiting the motility defect of DzitP cells (mutant of another PopZ-interacting protein) for bacterial suppressor genetics. This study showed that a simple read-out like motility can be used to dissect the members of the polarisome complexes in C. crescentus and in other bacteria