It is well-established that FtsZ drives peptidoglycan synthesis at the division site in walled
bacteria. However, the function and conservation of FtsZ in wall-less prokaryotes such as
mycoplasmas are less clear. In the genome-reduced bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium, the
cell division gene cluster is limited to four genes: mraZ, mraW, MG_223, and ftsZ. In a
previous study, we demonstrated that ftsZ was dispensable for growth of M. genitalium under
laboratory culture conditions. Herein, we show that the entire cell division gene cluster of M …