Structure and Synthesis of the Cell Wall
Lothar Eggeling, Gurdyal S. Besra and Luke Alderwick
from: Corynebacteria: Genomics and Molecular Biology (Edited by: Andreas Burkovski). Caister Academic Press, U.K. (2008)
Abstract
Apart from a general interest in understanding the living world, there are at least two other reasons for investigating the cell wall of Corynebacterium glutamicum. First of all, there is the influence of the cell-wall structure and its regulation on the amino acid efflux and, secondly, this knowledge would facilitate the understanding of the complex cell-wall structure of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. We summarize here what is known on the cell wall synthesis of C. glutamicum and describe how studies with this organism improved the understanding on the structure and synthesis of the polysaccharides arabinogalactan, lipomannan, and lipoarabinomannan in Corynebacterianeae encluding M. tuberculosis. While general reviews on cell wall synthesis and cell wall structure of Corynebacterium are available (Eggeling et al., 2001; Dover et al., 2004; Daffe, 2005), the present review focusses on the latest discoveries encluding the key functions of glycosyltransferases in building the cell wall of C. glutamicum read more ...
