Bookedited by Andreas Kuhn.
Summary: This book provides an up-to-date overview of the architecture and biosynthesis of bacterial and archaeal cell walls, highlighting the evolution-based similarities in, but also the intriguing differences between the cell walls of Gram-negative bacteria, the Firmicutes and Actinobacteria, and the Archaea. The recent major advances in this field, which have brought to light many new structural and functional details, are presented and discussed. Over the past five years, a number of novel systems, e.g. for lipid, porin and lipopolysaccharide biosynthesis have been described. In addition, new structural achievements with periplasmic chaperones have been made, all of which have revealed amazing details on how bacterial cell walls are synthesized. These findings provide an essential basis for future research, e.g. the development of new antibiotics. The books content is the logical continuation of Volume 84 of SCBI (on Prokaryotic Cytoskeletons), and sets the stage for upcoming volumes on Protein Complexes.
Contents:
The bacterial cell wall and membrane
a treasure chest for antibiotic targets
Lipopolysaccharide biosynthesis and transport to the outer membrane of Gram-negative bacteria
Lipoproteins: structure, function, biosynthesis
Outer membrane porins
Peptidoglycan
The Periplasmic Chaperones Skp and SurA
Bacterial signal peptidases
Carbohydrate Transport by Group Translocation: The Bacterial Phosphoenolpyruvate : Sugar Phosphotransferase System
Secondary active transporters
Respiratory membrane protein complexes convert chemical energy
Inner membrane translocases and insertases
The biosynthesis and structures of bacterial pili
Cell Walls and Membranes of Actinobacteria
Archaeal cell walls.