ArticleThe Journal of biological chemistry2016
Identification of Two Phosphate Starvation-induced Wall Teichoic Acid Hydrolases Provides First Insights into the Degradative Pathway of a Key Bacterial Cell Wall Component.
Article in The Journal of biological chemistry, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.
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Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed, 44 citations in OpenAlex.
- A metabolite morphogen coordinates multicellular development inScience advances · 2026Article
- Conformational changes of the baseplate regulating tail contraction of Staphylococcus phage 812.The EMBO journal · 2026Article
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- Wall teichoic acids regulate peptidoglycan synthesis to maintain rod shape in Bacillus subtilis.Nature microbiology · 2026Article
- A bacterial nutrition strategy for plant disease control.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- Altruistic feeding and cell-cell signaling during bacterial differentiation actively enhance phenotypic heterogeneity.Science advances · 2024Article
- Secreted nucleases reclaim extracellular DNA during biofilm development.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2024Article
- Altruistic feeding and cell-cell signaling during bacterial differentiation actively enhance phenotypic heterogeneity.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Cryo-EM analysis ofScience advances · 2024Article
- Comparative chemical genomics inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Functionally comparable but evolutionarily distinct nucleotide-targeting effectors help identify conserved paradigms across diverse immune systems.Nucleic acids research · 2023Article
- Giving a signal: how protein phosphorylation helps Bacillus navigate through different life stages.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2023Review
- Lysophosphatidylglycerol (LPG) phospholipase D maintains membrane homeostasis in Staphylococcus aureus by converting LPG to lysophosphatidic acid.The Journal of biological chemistry · 2023Article
- Regulation of peptidoglycan hydrolases: localization, abundance, and activity.Current opinion in microbiology · 2023Review
- Review
- Comparative Genomics Identifies Novel Genetic Changes Associated with Oxacillin, Vancomycin and Daptomycin Susceptibility in ST100 Methicillin-ResistantAntibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- WhyD tailors surface polymers to prevent premature bacteriolysis and direct cell elongation ineLife · 2022Article
- Understanding the Mechanisms That Drive Phage Resistance in Staphylococci to Prevent Phage Therapy Failure.Viruses · 2022Review
- Article
- Resource sharing between central metabolism and cell envelope synthesis.Current opinion in microbiology · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
The cell wall of most Gram-positive bacteria contains equal amounts of peptidoglycan and the phosphate-rich glycopolymer wall teichoic acid (WTA). During phosphate-limited growth of the Gram-positive model organism Bacillus subtilis 168, WTA is lost from the cell wall in a response mediated by the PhoPR two-component system, which regulates genes involved in phosphate conservation and acquisition. It has been thought that WTA provides a phosphate source to sustain growth during starvation conditions; however, WTA degradative pathways have not been described for this or any condition of bacterial growth. Here, we uncover roles for the Bacillus subtilis PhoP regulon genes glpQ and phoD as encoding secreted phosphodiesterases that function in WTA metabolism during phosphate starvation. Unlike the parent 168 strain, ΔglpQ or ΔphoD mutants retained WTA and ceased growth upon phosphate limitation. Characterization of GlpQ and PhoD enzymatic activities, in addition to X-ray crystal structures of GlpQ, revealed distinct mechanisms of WTA depolymerization for the two enzymes; GlpQ catalyzes exolytic cleavage of individual monomer units, and PhoD catalyzes endo-hydrolysis at nonspecific sites throughout the polymer. The combination of these activities appears requisite for the utilization of WTA as a phosphate reserve. Phenotypic characterization of the ΔglpQ and ΔphoD mutants revealed altered cell morphologies and effects on autolytic activity and antibiotic susceptibilities that, unexpectedly, also occurred in phosphate-replete conditions. Our findings offer novel insight into the B. subtilis phosphate starvation response and implicate WTA hydrolase activity as a determinant of functional properties of the Gram-positive cell envelope.
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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.