TOWARDS A COMPREHENSIVE VIEW OF THE BACTERIAL CELL WALL

B.A. Dmitriev, F.V. Toukach, S. Ehlers

N. F. Gamaleya Institute for Epidemiology and Microbiology, Moscow, Russia,
N. D. Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry, Moscow, Russia,
Division of Molecular Infection Biology, Research Center Borstel, Germany

KEYWORDS: tertiary structure, peptidoglycan, bacterial murein, computer simulation, scaffold, cell wall

TRENDS in Microbiology, 2005, v.13(12), pp.569-574

DOI: 10.1016/j.tim.2005.10.001

Direct in vivo visualization, in full atomic detail, of the microbial cell wall and its stress-bearing structural architecture remains one of the prime challenges in microbiology. In the meantime, molecular modeling can provide a framework for explaining and predicting mechanisms involved in morphogenesis, bacterial cell growth and cell division, during which the wall and its major structural component – murein – have to protect the cell from osmotic pressure and multiple tensile forces. Here, we illustrate why the scaffold concept of murein architecture provides a more comprehensive representation of bacterial cell wall physiology than previous models.

Arrangement of sress-bearing elements

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