Most species of bacteria can be broadly divided into two groups, known as gram-positive and gram-negative. These categories ...

Textbook images show peptidoglycan as straight and ordered. The biopolymer peptidoglycan that makes up bacterial cell walls was always assumed to be highly ordered. Textbook images like the one below ...

Closely related bacterial species use different strategies to build their cell walls, an international team of scientists led ...

The discovery of a second set of cell wall synthesizers can help pave the way for much-needed therapies that target the cell wall as a way to kill harmful bacteria, said study leaders David Rudner ...

A transporter which some bacteria use to recycle fragments of their cell wall has been discovered. Researchers found that the transporter controls resistance to certain kinds of cell-wall ...

For bacteria, the first line of defense is the cell wall, which keeps toxins such as antibiotics out. Now, researchers have discovered a key mechanism that bacteria use to build their cell walls ...

Cell walls -- the jacket-like structures that surround all known bacteria -- may turn out to be bacteria's undoing , holding the key to developing new drugs that target it for destruction.

Bacteria are single-celled organisms and the cell wall that surrounds their plasma membrane, is made from a polymer (rather like a mesh) of amino acids and sugars.

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, ...

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.

Cell wall construction is an important target for antibiotics such as penicillin and bacitracin. When these drugs interfere with cell wall production, bacteria burst and die.

Harvard University researchers have discovered a new family of proteins that are important in bacterial growth. This may provide an opportunity for developing new types of antibiotics, which are ...