ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2015
Coarse-grained simulations of bacterial cell wall growth reveal that local coordination alone can be sufficient to maintain rod shape.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 papers.
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29 citing papers in PubMed, 56 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Are cell length and volume interchangeable in cell cycle analysis?Biophysical journal · 2025Article
- Molecular Modeling and Simulation of the Mycobacterial Cell Envelope: From Individual Components to Cell Envelope Assemblies.The journal of physical chemistry. B · 2023Review
- A Decrease in Fatty Acid Synthesis Rescues Cells with Limited Peptidoglycan Synthesis Capacity.mBio · 2023Article
- A Self-Controlled and Self-Healing Model of Bacterial Cells.Membranes · 2022Article
- What have molecular simulations contributed to understanding of Gram-negative bacterial cell envelopes?Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2022Review
- Lytic transglycosylases mitigate periplasmic crowding by degrading soluble cell wall turnover products.eLife · 2022Article
- Lpp positions peptidoglycan at the AcrA-TolC interface in the AcrAB-TolC multidrug efflux pump.Biophysical journal · 2021Article
- Moltemplate: A Tool for Coarse-Grained Modeling of Complex Biological Matter and Soft Condensed Matter Physics.Journal of molecular biology · 2021Article
- Probing bacterial cell wall growth by tracing wall-anchored protein complexes.Nature communications · 2021Article
- Simulations of Proposed Mechanisms of FtsZ-Driven Cell Constriction.Journal of bacteriology · 2021Article
- An updated toolkit for exploring bacterial cell wall structure and dynamics.Faculty reviews · 2021Review
- Structural basis of peptidoglycan endopeptidase regulation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Model-Driven Controlled Alteration of Nanopillar Cap Architecture Reveals its Effects on Bactericidal Activity.Microorganisms · 2020Article
- Simulations suggest a constrictive force is required for Gram-negative bacterial cell division.Nature communications · 2019Article
- MreB polymers and curvature localization are enhanced by RodZ and predict E. coli's cylindrical uniformity.Nature communications · 2018Article
- Host-Polarized Cell Growth in Animal Symbionts.Current biology : CB · 2018Article
- Molecular imaging of glycan chains couples cell-wall polysaccharide architecture to bacterial cell morphology.Nature communications · 2018Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Bacteria are surrounded by a peptidoglycan (PG) cell wall that must be remodeled to allow cell growth. While many structural details and properties of PG and the individual enzymes involved are known, how the process is coordinated to maintain cell integrity and rod shape is not understood. We have developed a coarse-grained method to simulate how individual transglycosylases, transpeptidases, and endopeptidases could introduce new material into an existing unilayer PG network. We find that a simple model with no enzyme coordination fails to maintain cell wall integrity and rod shape. We then iteratively analyze failure modes and explore different mechanistic hypotheses about how each problem might be overcome by the macromolecules involved. In contrast to a current theory, which posits that long MreB filaments are needed to coordinate PG insertion sites, we find that local coordination of enzyme activities in individual complexes can be sufficient to maintain cell integrity and rod shape. We also present possible molecular explanations for the existence of monofunctional transpeptidases and glycosidases (glycoside hydrolases), trimeric peptide crosslinks, cell twisting during growth, and synthesis of new strands in pairs.
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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.