by Elio — When Bacil­lus sub­tilis sporu­lates, the cell des­tined to make a spore di­vides asym­met­ri­cally; one cell, the "fore­s­pore," be­comes the spore; the other, a short-lived sac­ri­fi­cial "mother cell." You'd ex­pect that a nu­cleoid would be par­ti­tioned be­tween these two com­part­ments be­fore they even think of di­vid­ing. Not so. Cell di­vi­sion and chro­mo­some seg­re­ga­tion get out of sync and...