ArticleNature microbiology2023
L-form conversion in Gram-positive bacteria enables escape from phage infection.
Article in Nature microbiology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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
32 citing papers in PubMed, 40 citations in OpenAlex.
- Phage therapy: from basic biology to clinical application.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2026Review
- Third-generation cephalosporin-induced L-form transition inMicrobiology spectrum · 2026Article
- Phage host range: determinants, dynamics and applications.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2026Review
- Bacterial immune systems.Antonie van Leeuwenhoek · 2026Review
- A bacterial CARD-NLR-like immune system controls the release of gene transfer agents.Nature microbiology · 2026Article
- Bacterial L-forms: Key Mechanisms of Drug Resistance, Disease Recurrence, and Immune Evasion.Indian journal of microbiology · 2026Review
- High-quality draft genome of the Listeria monocytogenes, one more vaccine strain against livestock listeriosis.Scientific data · 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
- Diverse Bacterial Anti-Phage Strategies: From the Laboratory to the Clinic.Current issues in molecular biology · 2026Review
- Article
- Quantifying phage infectivity from characteristics of bacterial population dynamics.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Peptidoglycan-reshuffling proteins SCO0954, SCO1758, SCO4439, and SCO4440 modulate the formation of wall-deficient cells in Streptomyces coelicolor under hyperosmotic sucrose stress.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The Virulence Factor LLO ofFoods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Phage-Based Control ofViruses · 2025Review
- Genome-wide identification of bacterial genes contributing to nucleus-forming jumbo phage infection.Nucleic acids research · 2025Article
- Oral bacteriophages and their potential as adjunctive treatments for periodontitis: a narrative review.Journal of oral microbiology · 2025Review
- Detection of Phage's Lytic Activity Against Carbapenemase-Producing Klebsiella pneumoniae Isolates Using a High-Throughput Microbroth Growth Inhibition Assay.Infectious diseases and therapy · 2025Article
- Synergistic Enzybiotic Effect of a Bacteriophage Endolysin and an Engineered Glucose Oxidase AgainstBiomolecules · 2024Article
- Mechanisms conferring bacterial cell wall variability and adaptivity.Biochemical Society transactions · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
At the end of a lytic bacteriophage replication cycle in Gram-positive bacteria, peptidoglycan-degrading endolysins that cause explosive cell lysis of the host can also attack non-infected bystander cells. Here we show that in osmotically stabilized environments, Listeria monocytogenes can evade phage predation by transient conversion to a cell wall-deficient L-form state. This L-form escape is triggered by endolysins disintegrating the cell wall from without, leading to turgor-driven extrusion of wall-deficient, yet viable L-form cells. Remarkably, in the absence of phage predation, we show that L-forms can quickly revert to the walled state. These findings suggest that L-form conversion represents a population-level persistence mechanism to evade complete eradication by phage attack. Importantly, we also demonstrate phage-mediated L-form switching of the urinary tract pathogen Enterococcus faecalis in human urine, which underscores that this escape route may be widespread and has important implications for phage- and endolysin-based therapeutic interventions.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.