Solid-state NMR of the Bacterial Cell Wall
Catherine Bougault, Sabine Hediger and Jean-Pierre Simorre
from: Bacterial Glycomics: Current Research, Technology and Applications (Edited by: Christopher W. Reid, Susan M. Twine, and Anne N. Reid). Caister Academic Press, U.K. (2012)
Abstract
Liquid-state NMR is traditionally used to provide fine chemical and structural information on soluble fragments, but is limited to biomolecules in the fast rotational tumbling regime. On the other hand, solid-state NMR, unlimited by the molecular size, is extensively applied to polymers, but provides a spectral resolution that is hampered by orientational heterogeneity. This chapter analyzes the potential of high-resolution solid-state NMR in providing chemical, structural and dynamics information on whole bacteria or bacterial cell envelopes in lyophilized as well as in fully-hydrated samples. The first section addresses bacterial strain typing issues and discusses the choice of adequate nuclear probes, the concomitant requirements for efficient isotope labeling schemes and the NMR methods used to characterize the chemical composition of peptidoglycan, teichoic acids, lipopolysaccharides or mycolic acids in bacteria. The second section describes the principles used to characterize molecular interactions of proteins, ions, antibiotic/antimicrobial molecules with the bacterial cell wall by NMR. The third and last section gives an overview of the contribution of solid-state NMR to characterize the cell wall structure and dynamics, and covers the different techniques used to extract specific structural information as well as global mobility read more ...
