Illuminating the in vivo molecular mechanism of bacterial chromosome replication and segregation

Chromosome replication and segregation are critical processes for life but little is known about when, where and how these occur at the single-molecule level. Professor Sherratt will use state-of-the-art live cell imaging, which enables visualisation at the individual protein level of the assembly and action of individual molecular machines that act in bacterial chromosome replication and segregation. He aims to track the progress of a single replication fork from initiation to termination, to visualise the recruitment of recombination-repair proteins to site-specific double-strand breaks and to dissect the molecular mechanism of chromosome segregation.