ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the chromosome organization and dynamics in bacteria. It reviews some of the main discoveries and open questions on the bacterial chromosome that emerged from studies, through the experimental, theoretical and computational work performed around them. The chapter highlights research directions in this area where theoretical and experimental work performed on bacteria can lead the way to formulating new questions concerning eukaryotic chromosomes, and, vice versa, attempt to identify where studies performed on eukaryotes can inform the field of the bacterial chromosome. It explores the four different but inter-related areas of chromosome folding, deoxyribonucleic acid-organizing proteins, chromosome dynamics, and role of molecular crowding, presented in separate sections. Molecular dynamics simulations with simple but explicit descriptions of crowders are available, and allow, for example, the study of the role of size and polydispersity of crowding agents on chromosome compaction.
