Cell-Wall Recycling and the Nexus to Antibiotic Resistance

Gram-negative bacteria have the ability to sense damage inflicted to the cell wall by beta-lactam antibiotics. The process involves chemical signaling, which will be a subject of my presentation. A primary mechanism for this sensing and signaling involves the events of cell-wall recycling. The cell wall is degraded for recycling and then it is resynthesized de novo for the repair function. The recycling events get initiated by the functions of a family of lytic transglycosylases, which generate the signaling factors that influence transcriptional events in the cytoplasm. The structures and mechanisms of these enzymes and those of the early cytoplasmic steps of recycling have been the subject of study in my lab, which I will disclose in my presentation.