It was long thought that when the membrane of a cell lost its integrity and broke down, the cell would die; cells cannot survive without a cell wall. Many antibiotics target the cell wall of bacteria, ...

A transporter which some bacteria use to recycle fragments of their cell wall has been discovered by researchers at Umeå university, Sweden. They found that the transporter controls resistance to ...

Investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have discovered in mouse models how cell walls from certain pneumonia-causing bacteria can cause fatal heart damage; researchers have also shown ...

Researchers at Umeå University in Sweden published a study “Breaking barriers: pCF10 type 4 secretion system relies on a self-regulating muramidase to modulate the cell wall” in mBIO that describes ...

Scientists have identified a protein that can stop an infection in its tracks by simply dissolving a bacterial pathogen's cell membrane. This work indicates that there are natural detergents that ...

The bacterial cell wall must be constantly remodeled in order to grow and divide. This involves the close coordination of lytic enzymes and peptidoglycan synthesis. Researchers led by Martin ...

Bacterial cell wall synthesis and division represent central themes in microbiology, as these processes underpin cellular integrity, morphology and reproduction. The dynamic interplay between the ...

It’s a common, straightforward idea in science: When a viral, bacterial, or parasitic pathogen sneaks its way into a host and tries to infect cells, the immune system detects its presence and mounts a ...

The figure illustrates bacterial cell wall synthesis as mediated by an enzyme called MraY (yellow/green). The enzyme modifies the cell wall building blocks (bricks) with a carrier lipid (cyan) so that ...