N terminus determinants of MinC from Neisseria gonorrhoeae mediate interaction with FtsZ but do not affect interaction with MinD or homodimerization.

While bacterial cell division has been widely studied in rod-shaped bacteria, the mechanism of cell division in round (coccal) bacteria remains largely enigmatic. In the present study, interaction between the cell division inhibitor MinC from Neisseria gonorrhoeae (MinC(Ng)) and the gonococcal cell division proteins MinD(Ng) and FtsZ(Ng) are demonstrated. Protein truncation and site-directed mutagenic approaches determined which N-terminal residues were essential for cell division inhibition by MinC(Ng) using cell morphology as an indicator of protein functionality. Truncation from or mutation at the 13th amino acid of the N terminus of MinC(Ng) resulted in loss of protein function. Bioinformatic analyses predicted that point mutations of L35P and L68P would affect the alpha-helical conformation of the protein and we experimentally showed that these mutations alter the functionality of MinC(Ng). The bacterial two-hybrid system showed that interaction of MinC(Ng) with FtsZ(Ng) is abrogated upon truncation of 13 N-terminal residues while MinC(Ng)-MinD(Ng) interaction or MinC(Ng) homodimerization is unaffected. These data confirm interactions among gonococcal cell division proteins and determine the necessity of the 13th amino acid for MinC(Ng) function.