Seminar

Structural Biology of Bacterial cell-wall remodeling: implications in antimicrobial resistance

Juan A. Hermoso, PhD

The bacterial cell wall is an elastic gigantic macromolecule that defines the shape of the bacterium and enables the bacterium to resist lysis as a result of its high intracellular osmotic pressure. How bacteria grow and divide while retaining a defined shape is a fundamental question in microbiology. The critical processes of cell growth and division require cell-wall remodeling by different enzymatic machineries that are carefully coordinated/regulated in order to warrant bacterial survival. In this talk some recent results on the structural biology of cell wall remodeling processes in very important multidrug-resistant pathogens such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa or MRSA will be presented. Recent representative references: Lee et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (2018 ), V 115, n17, 4393-4398. Acebron et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc. (2017), 139, 6795-6798. Mahasenam et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc. (2017), 139, 2102-2110. Dik et al. J. Am. Chem. Soc. (2017), 139 (4), pp 1448–1451. Bouley et al J. Am. Chem. Soc. (2015), 137, 1738?1741. Fishovitz et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc. (2014), 136, 9814–9817. Bartual et al. Nature Communications (2014), 5. Otero, et al Proc. of the Natl. Acad. of Sci. USA (2013), 110, 16808-16813. Lee et al. J. Am. Chem. Soc. (2013), 12604-12607. Martínez-Caballero et al. J. Am. Chem. Soc. (2013), 135; 10318-10321. Saleh et al. EMBO Molecular Medicine (2013), 5, 1852-1870. Pérez-Dorado et al. Nature Structural & Molecular Biology (2010), 17; 576-581.