ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2016
L-form bacteria, chronic diseases and the origins of life.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 75 papers.
What it found
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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.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
75 citing papers in PubMed, 128 citations in OpenAlex.
- Third-generation cephalosporin-induced L-form transition inMicrobiology spectrum · 2026Article
- Review of risk factors and prediction models for multidrug-resistant bacterial pulmonary infections in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.The Journal of international medical research · 2026Review
- Bacterial L-forms: Key Mechanisms of Drug Resistance, Disease Recurrence, and Immune Evasion.Indian journal of microbiology · 2026Review
- Testing the drivers of environmental persistence in bacterial pathogens.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2026Article
- Synergistic action of peptidoglycan and teichoic acid synthesis inhibitors leads to cell death by oxidative damage.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Revealing Cell Envelope Heterogeneity in Two StableInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2026Article
- Survival of ampicillin-treated uropathogenic Escherichia coli is independent of single-cell growth rates.npj antimicrobials and resistance · 2026Article
- Exploratory observational study of the association between bacterial L-form detection and intrauterine infection in pregnant women with placenta previa and bleeding.Frontiers in medicine · 2026Article
- Engineering bacterial cell morphology for the design of robust cell factories.Biochemistry and biophysics reports · 2025Review
- Mimicking early life-forms in the lab.eLife · 2025Article
- Tissue-like structures formed by a bacterium.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Bacterial colonization contributes to pathological scar formation via the regulation of inflammatory response.Journal of translational medicine · 2025Article
- Observation of persister cell histories reveals diverse modes of survival in antibiotic persistence.eLife · 2025Article
- A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of 16S rRNA and Cancer Microbiome Atlas Datasets to Characterize Microbiota Signatures in Normal Breast, Mastitis, and Breast Cancer.Microorganisms · 2025Review
- Antibiotic fosmidomycin protects bacteria from cell wall perturbations by antagonizing oxidative damage-mediated cell lysis.Frontiers in microbiology · 2025Article
- In vitro comparison of Enterococcus Faecalis survival in dentinal tubules following root canal therapy with AH plus, endoseal MTA, and cold ceramic sealers.BMC oral health · 2024Article
- Contact Lens Wear Alters Transcriptional Responses tobioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Mechanisms conferring bacterial cell wall variability and adaptivity.Biochemical Society transactions · 2024Review
- Aquatic environment drives the emergence of cell wall-deficient dormant forms in Listeria.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Attenuated Salmonella typhimurium L forms suppress tumor growth and promote apoptosis in murine ovarian tumors.Scientific reports · 2024Article
15 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
The peptidoglycan cell wall is widely conserved across the bacterial domain, suggesting that it appeared early in the evolution of bacteria. It is normally essential but under certain conditions wall-deficient or 'L-form' bacteria can be isolated. In Bacillus subtilis this normally requires two genetic changes. The first, exemplified by mutations shutting down wall precursor synthesis, works by increasing membrane synthesis. This promotes the unusual form of proliferation used by L-forms, involving a range of relatively disorganized membrane blebbing or vesiculation events. The secondary class of mutations probably work by relieving oxidative stress that L-forms may incur due to their unbalanced metabolism. Repression or inhibition of cell wall precursor synthesis can stimulate the L-form transition in a wide range of bacteria, of both Gram-positive and -negative lineages. L-forms are completely resistant to most antibiotics working specifically on cell wall synthesis, such as penicillins and cephalosporins, consistent with the many reports of their involvement in various chronic diseases. They are potentially important in biotechnology, because lack of a wall can be advantageous in a range of production or strain improvement applications. Finally, L-forms provide an interesting model system for studying early steps in the evolution of cellular life.This article is part of the themed issue 'The new bacteriology'.
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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.