Bacteria leverage spatial organization strategies to maintain a highly organized cellular interior, and compartmentalization is a key mechanism that provides physiological advantages to bacteria. Like their eukaryotic counterparts, bacteria deploy organelles to achieve compartmentalization. Here, we borrow from Greening and Lithgow, who define an organelle as a subcellular structure with interior components distinct from its exterior and a defined lipid or protein boundary layer [1].

Many molecular machines, including organelles, require precise spatial positioning to function effectively [2]. Bacteria have evolved protein-based systems to position their organelles; without such systems, the fitness of daughter cells is hindered 3, 4, 5. These systems include protein filaments, such as those that guide membrane-bound organelles in magnetotactic bacteria 6, 7, and protein gradients that position various cargos on the nucleoid 3, 8, 9, 10. In this review, we focus on the latter — specifically the ParA family of ATPases. We discuss the proposed positioning mechanisms of ParA-type ATPases and how these processes extend to the regulation of bacterial microcompartments (BMCs), a class of protein-based organelles.