Peptidoglycan recycling is critical for cell division, cell wall integrity and β-lactam resistance in Caulobacter crescentus
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Abstract
Most bacteria possess a peptidoglycan (PG) cell wall surrounding the cytoplasmic membrane, which is continuously remodeled during cell growth and division. During these processes, small PG turnover products are released by the activity of lytic enzymes. These are typically imported into the cell and reused in a process termed PG recycling. For that, a set of recycling specific enzymes break down the imported PG degradation products into the individual sugar and amino acid moieties, which then can enter the de novo PG biosynthesis pathway. While the underlying pathways have been studied intensively in gammaproteobacteria, knowledge of their presence and physiological roles in other bacterial lineages remains limited.
In this work, we comprehensively investigate PG recycling in the alphaproteobacterial model organism Caulobacter crescentus. We show that this species produces enzymes for the PG recycling pathway previously identified in Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. We demonstrate the existence of a functional PG recycling pathway in C. crescentus by characterizing the activities of key enzymes, using a combination of in vitro and in vivo approaches. Our results reveal that PG recycling is critical for C. crescentus cell morphology and division and is dynamically regulated to balance the flux of metabolic intermediates toward PG biosynthesis and central carbon metabolism.
Importantly, defects in PG recycling strongly impair the intrinsic ampicillin resistance of C. crescentus without changing the activity of its β-lactamase BlaA, likely by limiting PG precursor biosynthesis and thereby decreasing the activity of the cell wall biosynthetic machinery in the presence of residual antibiotic. These findings demonstrate that PG recycling plays a more critical role in cellular fitness and survival than previously assumed, suggesting that inhibiting this process could provide a promising strategy to combat β-lactam-resistant pathogens.
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Issued: 2026-04-16
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Is based on: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.109465.3
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FB17:Biologie
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en
Keywords
cell wallpeptidoglycanrecyclingmorphologyCaulobacter crescentuscell divisionbeta-lactamsresistanceantibioticsbacteriamicrobiologyalphaproteobacteria
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2.11-03 - Zellbiologie
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Richter, Pia: Peptidoglycan recycling is critical for cell division, cell wall integrity and β-lactam resistance in Caulobacter crescentus. : 2026-04-16. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17192/openumr/657.
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Except where otherwised noted, this item's license is described as Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International