5.8 Asymmetric Division Atlas of Bacterial and Archaeal Cell Structure Home

Asymmetric Division

Like monoderms, most diderms divide into roughly equally-sized daughter cells, but not all do. Just like the Tetrasphaera remsis you saw earlier, some diderm species produce one larger, and one smaller, daughter, like this Agrobacterium tumefaciens cell. In this case, this is because the smaller daughter is technically a bud. A. tumefaciens concentrate their growth at one pole, pushing out a bud that, once it becomes large enough, is pinched off and released. The process is very similar to what you saw in Hyphomonas neptunium, just without the intervening stalk.