ArticleMolecular microbiology2016
Dead-end intermediates in the enterobacterial common antigen pathway induce morphological defects in Escherichia coli by competing for undecaprenyl phosphate.
Article in Molecular microbiology, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 83 papers.
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Who cites it
83 citing papers in PubMed, 135 citations in OpenAlex.
- Article
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- Unmasking pathogen traits for chronic colonization in neurogenic bladder.Cell reports · 2026Article
- Bacteriophages target membrane-anchored glycopolymers to promote host cell lysis and progeny release.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Stepwise Assembly of theBiochemistry · 2026Article
- Pardon the interruption: how Und-P sequestration has reshaped our understanding of the bacterial cell envelope.Journal of bacteriology · 2026Review
- Article
- Dysregulation of a nucleotidyltransferase induces division and surface glycan defects inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Modulation of bacterial cell size and growth rate via activation of a cell envelope stress response.mBio · 2025Article
- Analysis of the regulation of undecaprenyl diphosphate dephosphorylation in Escherichia coli.FEBS open bio · 2025Article
- Article
- Enterobacterial common antigen repeat-unit flippase WzxE is required forApplied and environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- Functional loss ofFrontiers in microbiology · 2025Article
- Sequestration of dead-end undecaprenyl phosphate-linked oligosaccharide intermediate.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2025Article
- Structure of WzxE the lipid III flippase for Enterobacterial Common Antigen polysaccharide.Open biology · 2025Article
- Recent advances in understanding of enterobacterial common antigen synthesis and regulation.Open biology · 2025Review
- Tolerance mechanisms in polysaccharide biosynthesis: Implications for undecaprenol phosphate recycling in Escherichia coli and Shigella flexneri.PLoS genetics · 2025Article
- Determining glycosyltransferase functional order via lethality due to accumulated O-antigen intermediates, exemplified withApplied and environmental microbiology · 2024Article
- Co-ordinated assembly of the multilayered cell envelope of Gram-negative bacteria.Current opinion in microbiology · 2024Review
23 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Bacterial morphology is determined primarily by the architecture of the peptidoglycan (PG) cell wall, a mesh-like layer that encases the cell. To identify novel mechanisms that create or maintain cell shape in Escherichia coli, we used flow cytometry to screen a transposon insertion library and identified a wecE mutant that altered cell shape, causing cells to filament and swell. WecE is a sugar aminotransferase involved in the biosynthesis of enterobacterial common antigen (ECA), a non-essential outer membrane glycolipid of the Enterobacteriaceae. Loss of wecE interrupts biosynthesis of ECA and causes the accumulation of the undecaprenyl pyrophosphate-linked intermediate ECA-lipid II. The wecE shape defects were reversed by: (i) preventing initiation of ECA biosynthesis, (ii) increasing the synthesis of the lipid carrier undecaprenyl phosphate (Und-P), (iii) diverting Und-P to PG synthesis or (iv) promoting Und-P recycling. The results argue that the buildup of ECA-lipid II sequesters part of the pool of Und-P, which, in turn, adversely affects PG synthesis. The data strongly suggest there is competition for a common pool of Und-P, whose proper distribution to alternate metabolic pathways is required to maintain normal cell shape in E. coli.
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Registered trials
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