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Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews, March 2007, p. 230-253, Vol. 71, No. 1
1092-2172/07/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/MMBR.00035-06
Copyright © 2007, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Functional Taxonomy of Bacterial Hyperstructures

Vic Norris,^1* Tanneke den Blaauwen,² Armelle Cabin-Flaman,¹ Roy H. Doi,³ Rasika Harshey,⁴ Laurent Janniere,⁵ Alfonso Jimenez-Sanchez,⁶ Ding Jun Jin,⁷ Petra Anne Levin,⁸ Eugenia Mileykovskaya,⁹ Abraham Minsky,¹⁰ Milton Saier Jr.,¹¹ and Kirsten Skarstad¹²

Department of Science, University of Rouen, 76821 Mont Saint Aignan Cedex, and Epigenomics Project, Genopole, 91000 Evry, France,¹ Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences, University of Amsterdam,1098 SM Amsterdam, The Netherlands,² Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of California, Davis, California 95616,³ Institute of Cellular and Molecular Biology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712,⁴ Laboratoire de Génétique Microbienne, INRA, 78352 Jouy en Josas, France,⁵ Department of Genetics, Faculty of Sciences, Universidad de Extremadura, E06080-Badajoz, Spain,⁶ Gene Regulation and Chromosome Biology Laboratory, National Cancer Institute-Frederick, NIH, Frederick, Maryland 21702,⁷ Department of Biology, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri 63130,⁸ Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, The University of Texas Medical School, Houston, Texas 77030,⁹ Department of Organic Chemistry, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel,¹⁰ Division of Biological Sciences, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093-0116,¹¹ Department of Cell Biology, Institute for Cancer Research, The Norwegian Radium Hospital, 0310 Oslo, Norway,¹²

The levels of organization that exist in bacteria extend from macromolecules to populations. Evidence that there is also a level of organization intermediate between the macromolecule and the bacterial cell is accumulating. This is the level of hyperstructures. Here, we review a variety of spatially extended structures, complexes, and assemblies that might be termed hyperstructures. These include ribosomal or "nucleolar" hyperstructures; transertion hyperstructures; putative phosphotransferase system and glycolytic hyperstructures; chemosignaling and flagellar hyperstructures; DNA repair hyperstructures; cytoskeletal hyperstructures based on EF-Tu, FtsZ, and MreB; and cell cycle hyperstructures responsible for DNA replication, sequestration of newly replicated origins, segregation, compaction, and division. We propose principles for classifying these hyperstructures and finally illustrate how thinking in terms of hyperstructures may lead to a different vision of the bacterial cell.

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* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Science, University of Rouen, 76821 Mont Saint Aignan Cedex, France. Phone: (33) 235 14 69 08. Fax: (33) 235 14 70 20. E-mail: vjn{at}univ-rouen.fr.

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Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews, March 2007, p. 230-253, Vol. 71, No. 1
1092-2172/07/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/MMBR.00035-06
Copyright © 2007, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

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