Euryarchaeota and Crenarchaeota are two major phyla of archaea which use distinct molecular apparatuses for cell division. Euryarchaea make use of the tubulin-related protein FtsZ, while Crenarchaea, which appear to lack functional FtsZ, employ the Cdv (cell division) components to divide. Ammonia oxidizing archaeon (AOA) Nitrosopumilus maritimus belongs to another archaeal phylum, the Thaumarchaeota, which has both FtsZ and Cdv genes in the genome. Here, we used a heterologous expression system to characterize FtsZ and Cdv proteins from N. maritimus by investigating the ability of these proteins to form polymers. We show that one of the Cdv proteins in N. maritimus, the CdvB (Nmar_0816), is capable of forming stable polymers when expressed in fission yeast. The N. maritimus CdvB is also capable of assembling into filaments in mammalian cells. However, N. maritimus FtsZ does not assemble into polymers in our system. The ability of CdvB, but not FtsZ, to polymerize is consistent with a recent finding showing that several Cdv proteins, but not FtsZ, localize to the mid-cell site in the dividing N. maritimus. Thus, we propose that it is Cdv proteins, rather than FtsZ, that function as the cell division apparatus in N. maritimus. 1. Introduction Cell division mechanisms in archaea, the third domain of life, have been relatively less elucidated until recent years. As opposed to eukarya and bacteria, which use actomyosin ring and FtsZ ring, respectively, for cell division, archaea appear to be more diverse in terms of their use of cell division machineries. It appears that FtsZ acts as a primary cell division apparatus in nearly all members of Euryarchaeota [1–4]. Nevertheless, FtsZ is notably absent from the other major phylum of archaea, the Crenarcheota, which consists of extremophiles that survive at extremely harsh conditions like high temperatures and high acidic environments. Recent findings strongly suggest that crenarchaeon Sulfolobus acidocaldarius utilizes the Cdv components (also known as endosomal sorting complex required for transport (ESCRT) in eukaryotes) for cell division [5–7]. ESCRT apparatus in eukaryotes is made up of several complexes that play important roles in different cellular processes, for instance, multivesicular body formation, membrane abscission during cytokinesis, and virus egression [8–11]. In S. acidocaldarius, the ESCRT-III-like CdvB (Saci_1373), Vps4-like CdvC (Saci_1372), and another gene that encodes for a coiled-coil domain protein, CdvA (Saci_1374), are arranged in an operon-like structure [5, 6]. S. acidocaldarius
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