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Abstract

Most motile bacteria are able to bias their movement towards more favorable environments or to escape from obnoxious substances by a process called chemotaxis. Chemotaxis depends on a chemosensory system that is able to sense specific environmental signals and generate a behavioral response. Typically, the signal is transmitted to the bacterial flagellum, ultimately regulating the swimming behavior of individual cells. Chemotaxis is mediated by proteins that assemble into large, highly ordered arrays. It is imperative for successful chemotactic behavior and cellular competitiveness that chemosensory arrays form and localize properly within the cell. Here we review how chemotaxis arrays form and localize in Vibrio cholerae and Vibrio parahaemolyticus We focus on how the ParC/ParP-system mediates cell cycle-dependent polar localization of chemotaxis arrays and thus ensures proper cell pole development and array inheritance upon cell division.