DNA-Membrane Complex and Nuclear Segregation in Bacteria

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

While many aspects of the bacterial cell have been uncovered in the last two decades, we still know very little about the general system which integrates cellular controls, the regulation of DNA replication, the formation of bacterial membrane, and the process of cellular division with its equipartition of the DNA copies. Some years ago, at a similar symposium, a model was proposed to account for the regulation of DNA synthesis and the regular separation of chromosomes among daughter cells (Jacob et al., 1963). It was assumed that cellular DNA is organized in units of replication, or replicons, the principal one being the bacterial chromosome. Replicons were assumed to be in some way attached to the bacterial membrane where replication occurred by passage of the circular DNA units through an enzyme complex in the membrane. Separation and equipartition of the DNA copies were supposed to occur by membrane growth between these...