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Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9573-4087
AccessType
Campus-Only Access for Five (5) Years
Document Type
dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Program
Molecular and Cellular Biology
Year Degree Awarded
2022
Month Degree Awarded
February
First Advisor
M. Sloan Siegrist
Second Advisor
Yasu S. Morita
Third Advisor
Peter Chien
Fourth Advisor
Natividad Ruiz
Subject Categories
Biochemistry | Microbial Physiology | Organic Chemistry
Abstract
The bacterial cell wall peptidoglycan is a conserved component of the bacterial envelope that is essential for morphogenesis and survival, making it an exceptional drug target. With a multitude of cellular shapes, different bacterial species have characteristic subcellular sites of peptidoglycan synthesis that they must carefully maintain for shape, surface integrity and, ultimately, viability. In this work, I studied and targeted cell wall synthesis using prokaryotic models such as mycobacteria, a group of bacteria that include animal and human pathogens, Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus. In the first part, I found that peptidoglycan-marking probes report different metabolic activities in mycobacteria, and that these organisms can grow peptidoglycan differently than traditionally thought. Later, I describe how the pole and lateral-growing Mycobacterium smegmatis and E. coli, respectively, partition their peptidoglycan synthesis within plasma membrane compartments and identify key elements that mediate this organization. And finally, I designed and tested different strategies to tackle the envelope of S. aureus.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/24616949.0
Recommended Citation
García-Heredia, Alam, "Synthesis and targeting of the bacterial cell wall" (2022). Doctoral Dissertations. 2467.
https://doi.org/10.7275/24616949.0
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/2467
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.