Significance Across all kingdoms of life, maintaining the correct cell shape is critical for behaviors such as sensing, motility, surface attachment, and nutrient acquisition. Maintaining proper shape requires cellular-scale coordination of proteins and feedback systems that enable responses that correct local morphological perturbations. Here, we demonstrate that the MreB cytoskeleton in Escherichia coli preferentially localizes to regions of negative curvature, directing growth away from the poles and actively straightening locally curved regions of the cell. Moreover, our biophysical simulations of curvature-biased growth suggest that cell wall insertion causes surface deformations that could be responsible for the circumferential motion of MreB. Taken together, our work demonstrates that MreB’s local orchestration of persistent, bursty growth enables robust, uniform growth at the cellular scale.

Rod-like bacterial shape is maintained by feedback between cell curvature and cytoskeletal localization