Self-organization of mortal filaments and its role in bacterial division ring formation

Filaments in the cell commonly treadmill. Driven by energy consumption, they grow on one end while shrinking on the other, causing filaments to appear motile even though individual proteins remain static. This process is characteristic of cytoskeletal filaments and leads to collective filament self-organization. Here we show that treadmilling drives filament nematic ordering by dissolving misaligned filaments. Taking the bacterial FtsZ protein involved in cell division as an example, we show that this mechanism aligns FtsZ filaments in vitro and drives the organization of the division ring in living