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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.
Type
campusfive
dissertation
dissertation
Date
2022-02
Publisher
Degree
License
License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/