Use of the Sucrose Gradient Method for Bacterial Cell Cycle Synchronization

Abstract

Although many undergraduate and graduate Cell and Molecular Biology courses study the bacterial cell cycle and the mechanisms that regulate prokaryotic cell division, few laboratory projects exist for the enhanced study of cell cycle characteristics in a standard teaching laboratory. One notable reason for this lack of engaging laboratory projects is, although bacterial cells can be grown fairly easily, these cultured cells are in a variety of cell cycle states. As such, to study and understand the factors that regulate bacterial cell division in morphological, physiological, and even molecular respects, it is necessary to have bacterial cells in the same stage of its cell cycle. This matching can be performed by a procedure called cell cycle synchronization.