Understanding of dynamic systems can be obtained by analyzing a system's reaction to perturbations or by quantitative analysis of an unperturbed system. In this thesis I use both approaches to investigate microbial control of space and time. Chapter 1 introduces the thesis and each chapter briefly. Chapter 2 describes the engineering of a genetic device coupled to the endogenous cell cycle of the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae that controls cell-cycle progression selectively in daughter cells. The synthetic device was built in a modular fashion by combining cell-cycle specific promoters and protein degradation domains and an enzymatic domain which conditionally arrested cells. Engineered cells grew normally in the absence of drug but cells displayed reduced, linear growth on the population level in the presence of drug due to arrest of newly-divided daughter cells. Fluorescence microscopy of single cells showed that the device induced cell arrest exclusively in daughter cells and radically shifted the age distribution of the resulting population towards older cells. This device, termed the daughter arrester , provides a blueprint for more advanced devices that mimic developmental processes by having control over cell growth and death. Chapter 3 and 4 address the intracellular organization of photosynthetic prokaryotes. Chapter 3 addresses the spatial arrangement of carboxysomes, a bacterial microcompartment involved in carbon fixation in cyanobacteria. We fluorescently labelled carboxysomes and show they were spatially ordered in a linear fashion leading to non-random segregation during cell division. Mutations of ParA abolished spatial organization and caused random carboxysome segregation during cell division and impaired carbon fixation after disparate partitioning. Thus, cyanobacteria use the cytoskeleton to control the spatial arrangement of carboxysomes and to optimize the metabolic process of carbon fixation. Chapter 4 addresses chromosome segregation in cyanobacteria containing multiple copies of one single chromosome. We fluorescently labelled chromosomes and show they replicated one chromosome at a time during cell growth. Chromosome replication was confined to cellular regions that showed no spatial preference within the cell. The transient alignment of chromosome origins during cell cycle we observed may be driving the non-random chromosome segregation.