ArticleAntimicrobial agents and chemotherapy2012
An antibiotic that inhibits a late step in wall teichoic acid biosynthesis induces the cell wall stress stimulon in Staphylococcus aureus.
Article in Antimicrobial agents and chemotherapy, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 52 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
52 citing papers in PubMed, 98 citations in OpenAlex.
- Comparing Chemoenzymatic and Conventional Synthetic Strategies to Wall Teichoic Acid Peptidoglycan Fragments.Israel journal of chemistry · 2026Article
- Pardon the interruption: how Und-P sequestration has reshaped our understanding of the bacterial cell envelope.Journal of bacteriology · 2026Review
- Cell splitting in Staphylococcus aureus is controlled by an adaptor protein facilitating degradation of a peptidoglycan hydrolase.PLoS genetics · 2025Article
- Cryo-EM analyses unveil details of mechanism and targocil-II mediated inhibition of S. aureus WTA transporter TarGH.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Fighting Antimicrobial Resistance: Innovative Drugs in Antibacterial Research.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2025Review
- Antibacterial mechanism of hyper-branched poly-L-lysine against methicillin-resistantFrontiers in microbiology · 2025Article
- Interactions between Helcococcus kunzii and Staphylococcus aureus: How a commensal bacterium modulates the virulence and metabolism of a pathogen in a chronic wound in vitro model.BMC microbiology · 2024Article
- Potent and specific antibiotic combination therapy against Clostridioides difficile.Nature chemical biology · 2024Article
- Sensitizing methicillin-resistantAntimicrobial agents and chemotherapy · 2024Article
- Bacterial metabolism and susceptibility to cell wall-active antibiotics.Advances in microbial physiology · 2023Review
- Current Promising Strategies against Antibiotic-Resistant Bacterial Infections.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- Influence of Sodium Bicarbonate on Wall Teichoic Acid Synthesis and β-Lactam Sensitization in NaHCOMicrobiology spectrum · 2022Article
- Correlation Analysis between GlpQ-Regulated Degradation of Wall Teichoic Acid and Biofilm Formation Triggered by Lactobionic Acid inFoods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- The physiology and genetics of bacterial responses to antibiotic combinations.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2022Review
- Targeting the Achilles' Heel of Multidrug-ResistantInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2022Article
- GpsB Coordinates Cell Division and Cell Surface Decoration by Wall Teichoic Acids in Staphylococcus aureus.Microbiology spectrum · 2022Article
- Targeting the Holy Triangle of Quorum Sensing, Biofilm Formation, and Antibiotic Resistance in Pathogenic Bacteria.Microorganisms · 2022Review
- Structure-Based Discovery of Lipoteichoic Acid Synthase Inhibitors.Journal of chemical information and modeling · 2022Article
- Article
- Union Is Strength: Target-Based and Whole-Cell High-Throughput Screens in Antibacterial Discovery.Journal of bacteriology · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Wall teichoic acids (WTAs) are phosphate-rich, sugar-based polymers attached to the cell walls of most Gram-positive bacteria. In Staphylococcus aureus, these anionic polymers regulate cell division, protect cells from osmotic stress, mediate host colonization, and mask enzymatically susceptible peptidoglycan bonds. Although WTAs are not required for survival in vitro, blocking the pathway at a late stage of synthesis is lethal. We recently discovered a novel antibiotic, targocil, that inhibits a late acting step in the WTA pathway. Its target is TarG, the transmembrane component of the ABC transporter (TarGH) that exports WTAs to the cell surface. We examined here the effects of targocil on S. aureus using transmission electron microscopy and gene expression profiling. We report that targocil treatment leads to multicellular clusters containing swollen cells displaying evidence of osmotic stress, strongly induces the cell wall stress stimulon, and reduces the expression of key virulence genes, including dltABCD and capsule genes. We conclude that WTA inhibitors that act at a late stage of the biosynthetic pathway may be useful as antibiotics, and we present evidence that they could be particularly useful in combination with beta-lactams.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.