General principles for the formation and proliferation of a wall-free (L-form) state in bacteria
- Newcastle University, United Kingdom
Abstract
The peptidoglycan cell wall is a defining structural feature of the bacterial-kingdom. Curiously, some bacteria have the ability to switch to a wall-free or 'L-form' state. Although known for decades, the general properties of L-forms are poorly understood, largely due to the lack of their systematic analysis in the molecular biology era. Here we show that inhibition of the peptidoglycan precursor synthesis promotes the generation of L-forms from both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. We show that L-forms generated have in common a mechanism of proliferation involving membrane blebbing and tubulation, which is dependant on an altered rate of membrane synthesis. Crucially, this mode of proliferation is independent of the essential FtsZ-based division machinery. Our results suggest that the L-form mode of proliferation is conserved across the bacterial-kingdom, reinforcing the idea that it could have been used in primitive cells, and opening up its use in the generation of synthetic cells.
Article and author information
Author details
Reviewing Editor
- Roberto Kolter, Harvard Medical School, United States
Version history
- Received: September 5, 2014
- Accepted: October 28, 2014
- Accepted Manuscript published: October 30, 2014 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: November 26, 2014 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2014, Mercier et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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General principles for the formation and proliferation of a wall-free (L-form) state in bacteria
eLife 3:e04629.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.04629
Further reading
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Some bacteria can survive and thrive despite not having a cell wall.
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