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Science 8 August 2003:
Vol. 301. no. 5634, pp. 780 - 785
DOI: 10.1126/science.1084780
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Review

Bacterial Chromosome Dynamics

David J. Sherratt

Bacterial chromosomes are highly compacted structures and share many properties with their eukaryote counterparts, despite not being organized into chromatin or being contained within a cell nucleus. Proteins conserved across all branches of life act in chromosome organization, and common mechanisms maintain genome integrity and ensure faithful replication. The principles that underlie chromosome segregation in bacteria and eukaryotes share similarities, although bacteria segregate DNA as it replicates and lack a eukaryote-like mitotic apparatus for segregating chromosomes. This may be because the distances that newly replicated bacterial chromosomes move apart before cell division are small as compared to those in eukaryotes. Bacteria specify positional information, which determines where cell division will occur and which places the replication machinery and chromosomal loci at defined locations that change during cell cycle progression.

Division of Molecular Genetics, Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QU, UK.

E-mail: sherratt{at}bioch.ox.ac.uk

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