The growing crisis in antibiotic resistance necessitates a complete molecular understanding of the mechanisms and regulation of bacterial growth and replication to inform development of new drugs. Our laboratory aims to elucidate the mechanisms bacteria use to grow and divide, and to adapt their growth during times of stress or changing environmental conditions. We have a particular interest in the regulation and accurate execution of cell biological processes in time and space, including morphogenesis, cytokinesis, chromosome segregation, and other cell cycle events. In the past several years, for example, we have made significant progress in understanding how the dynamic assembly properties of the cytoskeletal tubulin homolog FtsZ impact its ability to direct cell wall remodeling for cytokinesis. Our current work is focused on (1) identifying and characterizing the mechanisms by which cytoskeletal proteins signal to cell wall remodeling for division and morphogenesis and (2) discovering how global regulators of growth during stress reprogram cellular physiology to impact morphogenesis and cell cycle progression to permit survival. We study these events in two Gram-negative Alphaproteobacteria: the free-living, dimorphic bacterium Caulobacter crescentus and the obligate intracellular pathogen Rickettsia parkeri. We are highly collaborative, and take a multi-faceted approach to address these questions, combining bacterial genetics, genomics, microscopy, biochemistry, and in vitro reconstitution to obtain a comprehensive mechanistic view of bacterial growth in different environments.