D-amino Acids Govern Stationary Phase Cell Wall Re-Modeling in Bacteria
By H. Lam, D. Oh, Felipe Cava, Constantin N. Takacs, Jon Clardy, M. de Pedro, M. Waldor. Science, 2009
595 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Anyone for d? The chemistry of amino acids comes in two chirally distinct flavors—so-called l- and d-enantiomers. By far the most commonly used form of amino acids in all kingdoms of life is the l-form. Now Lam et al. (p. 1552; see the Perspective by Blanke) present the unanticipated observation that diverse bacteria release large amounts of various d-amino acids into the environment in a population density–dependent fashion and that d-amino acids act as extracellular effectors that regulate the composition, structure, amount, and strength of peptidoglycan, the major stress-bearing component of the bacterial cell wall. Bacteria produce D-amino acids to regulate their cell wall composition, structure, amount, and strength. In all known organisms, amino acids are predominantly thought to be synthesized and used as their L-enantiomers. Here, we found that bacteria produce diverse D-amino acids as well, which accumulate at millimolar concentrations in supernatants of stationary phase cultures. In Vibrio cholerae, a dedicated racemase produced D-Met and D-Leu, whereas Bacillus subtilis generated D-Tyr and D-Phe. These unusual D-amino acids appear to modulate synthesis of peptidoglycan, a strong and elastic polymer that serves as the stress-bearing component of the bacterial cell wall. D-Amino acids influenced peptidoglycan composition, amount, and strength, both by means of their incorporation into the polymer and by regulating enzymes that synthesize and modify it. Thus, synthesis of D-amino acids may be a common strategy for bacteria to adapt to changing environmental conditions.
Subfields: Biochemistry, Materials Chemistry, Molecular Biology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a462ccfb30bd53c8188b69ac80578e7b4b75e0c9
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In Molecular Biology
Citations in the corpus
- Bacterial Biofilms: Development, Dispersal, and Therapeutic Strategies in the Dawn of the Postantibiotic Era (2013, background): “B. subtilis forms robust biofilms, which lose their integrity after 5–8 d; KolodkinGal and colleagues found that biofilm disassembly is facilitated by a mixture of D-amino acids 6 Cite this article as Cold Spring Harb Perspect Med 2013;3:a010306 w w w .p er sp ec ti ve si n m ed ic in e. o rg (D-leu”
- From the regulation of peptidoglycan synthesis to bacterial growth and morphology (2011, background): “subtilis and the release of these D -amino acids into the growth medium, where they accumulate at millimolar concentration”
- Should we stay or should we go: mechanisms and ecological consequences for biofilm dispersal (2011, background): “cholerae , D -amino acid concentrations are low in exponential phase but begin to accumulate in early stationary phas”