Domaines
Condensed matter
Statistical physics
Biophysics
Soft matter
Physics of liquids
Physics of living systems
Non-equilibrium Statistical Physics
Hydrodynamics/Turbulence/Fluid mechanics
Type of internship
Expérimental et théorique Description
Outer membrane proteins (OMP) mediate the interactions between bacteria and their environment. Their localization is relevant for many physiological processes such as cell infection or biofilm formation. Recent development on the dynamics OMP insertion have shown that OMP are mainly inserted at midcell and then passively advected to the poles. This scenario, where the source of OMP insertion on the outer membrane is located at midcell likely predicts a gradient from the center to the poles. However, a number of OMP have been reported to follow an inverted gradient from poles to cell center. We recently demonstrated that the periplasmic dynamics of Ag43, an E. coli OMP involved in cell-cell adhesion, is biased towards the poles. Unexpectedly, we showed that the non-trivial dynamics in the periplasm is coupled to the Min system, which oscillates from pole to pole in the cytoplasm. Now, we would like to understand how the spatio-temporal oscillations of Min protein concentration can generate a net drift of Ag43 in the periplasm despite the presence of the inner cell membrane that separate the two systems. We propose to test if the coupling between cytoplasmic oscillation and periplasmic drift can emerge from hydrodynamic interactions mediated by Marangoni flows caused by periodic change of the lipidic composition at cell poles due to cardiolipin-Min interactions.
Contact
Nicolas Desprat