Murein and pseudomurein cell wall binding domains of bacteria and archaea--a comparative view

Appl Microbiol Biotechnol (2011) 92:921928 DOI 10.1007/s00253-011-3637-0

MINI-REVIEW

Murein and pseudomurein cell wall binding domains of bacteria and archaeaa comparative view

Ganesh Ram R. Visweswaran & Bauke W. Dijkstra &

Jan Kok

Received: 27 August 2011 /Revised: 29 September 2011 /Accepted: 7 October 2011 /Published online: 20 October 2011 # The Author(s) 2011. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com

Abstract The cell wall, a major barrier protecting cells from their environment, is an essential compartment of both bacteria and archaea. It protects the organism from internal turgor pressure and gives a defined shape to the cell. The cell wall serves also as an anchoring surface for various proteins and acts as an adhesion platform for bacteriophages. The walls of bacteria and archaea are mostly composed of murein and pseudo-murein, respectively. Cell wall binding domains play a crucial role in the non-covalent attachment of proteins to cell walls. Here, we give an overview of the similarities and differences in the biochemical and functional properties of the two major murein and pseudomurein cell wall binding domains, i.e., the Lysin Motif (LysM) domain (Pfam PF01476) and the pseudomurein binding (PMB) domain (Pfam PF09373) of bacteria and archaea, respectively.

Keywords Murein . Pseudomurein . Motifs and domains

Introduction

Murein and pseudomurein are the major cell wall material of bacteria and some methanogenic archaea, respectively. Murein, also called peptidoglycan, is composed of N-acetylmuramic acid and N-acetyl-D-glucosamine (NAG) linked by (14) glycosidic bonds. Pseudomurein is made up of N-acetyltalosaminuronic acid (NAT) and NAG connected through (13) glycosidic linkages (Knig and Kandler 1979a, b; Knig et al. 1983; Leps et al. 1984; Kiener et al. 1987; Luo et al. 2001, 2002; Eichler 2003). Even though cell walls made of either murein or pseudomurein resemble each other in their structural and functional properties, there are some fundamental differences in their biosynthetic pathways and in cell wall chemistry, suggesting that they may not have evolved from a common ancestor but are rather the result of convergent evolution. This hypothesis, proposed by Hartmann et al. (Hartmann and Knig 1990; Steenbakkers et al. 2006) two decades ago, is supported by recent genome sequencing results and by the phylogenetic distribution of the two types of cell wall-containing organisms. Comparison of the biosynthetic and assembly...