Research by scientists at the University of Sheffield, looking at a group of pathogens, including those that cause Q fever, Legionnaires disease and Crown gall disease in plants, has revealed how these bacteria maintain cell envelope integrity.
The paper 'β-Barrel Proteins Tether the Outer Membrane in Many Gram-Negative Bacteria', published in Nature Microbiology revealed that several pathogens use integral membrane proteins called porins, to tether the outer membrane to peptidoglycan, the major and essential component of the bacterial cell wall.
The work focusing on Coxiella burnettii, showed that the stabilization of the cell envelope is cell cycle dependent and involves a family of enzymes that specifically recognise distinct porins during growth.
Overall, the work sheds light on the mechanism by which an important group of pathogens are able to persist in the environment and to cause disease.
Dr Stéphane Mesnage, from the Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, at the University of Sheffield, said: “This work represents a significant advancement in our knowledge of the bacterial cell wall. Through the use of an analysis pipeline combining high resolution LC-MS/MS and cutting edge data analysis software; we were able to conduct a study that would have literally required weeks of manual analysis.
“Thanks to the multidisciplinary nature of our team we were able to achieve peptidoglycan analysis on an unprecedented scale allowing us to probe a particularly challenging unanswered biological question.”
The research was carried out in collaboration with Rocky Mountain Labs (NIH/NIAID), Cornell University, Georgia Institute of Technology, UT/ORNL, Protein Metrics Inc, University of Tennessee with funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and the Medical Research Council. The paper is published back-to-back with another study describing a similar mechanism in Brucella abortus.Read the paper
