Organizing organelles: bacterial strategies for localizing intracellular compartments

Bacteria contain multiple subcellular compartments that enable a variety of biochemical activities and behaviors. In many cases, the organization of these organelles is not random and is directly linked to their function. In the last decade, mechanistic studies have uncovered the machinery responsible for organelle positioning in some bacterial systems. Here, we review several such positioning systems with an emphasis on two arrangement patterns and the molecular mechanisms used to achieve them. We start with carboxysomes as an illustration of how a ParA/MinD ATPase system is used to equally distribute organelles in a cell. We follow with an example of an actin-like cytoskeletal system that links lipid-bounded magnetosome organelles into a continuous chain. We finally explore emerging models of bacterial organelle positioning and conclude with an outlook on the future opportunities in the study of bacterial organelle cell biology.