Packing bacterial components in unusual containers allows to explore how complex machineries work without the limitations imposed when using the whole cell. This approach, central to Miguel Vicente's HFSP grant, has produced valuable information on the cell division machinery, the divisome. New interactions between elements of the machinery have been revealed and functional assemblies have been reconstructed in the test tube.

On 28 February 2014 they will summarize the results of their project and discuss future Synthetic Biology developments in this field during a one day workshop at the Spanish National Centre for Biotechnology in Madrid. For more information and registration please visit the workshop's website.

PROGRAMME

10:00 Registration

10:30 - PETRA SCHWILLE. The contractile ring - facts and fiction

11:15 - WILLIAM MARGOLIN. Inhibiting the proto-ring, from A to Z

12:00 - MARTIN THANBICHLER. Mechanisms of MipZ-mediated division control in Caulobacter crescentus

13:15 Lunch

14:30 - MIGUEL VICENTE. Divisome adventures in maxicells

15:15 - GERMÁN RIVAS. Biochemical reconstruction of bacterial division in minimal systems

16:00 - DANIEL DALEY. The final stages of cell division in Escherichia coli: What happens and when?