D. Storm
May 1, 1974
Citations
0
Influential Citations
72
Citations
Quality indicators
Journal
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
Abstract
Bacitracin is a cyclic peptide antibiotic that was first isolated from a strain of Bacillus licheniformis in 1945.' Since its discovery, it has been established that the bacitracin peptides inhibit the biosynthesis of bacterial cell walk1' For example, bacitracin induces the accumulation of uridine nucleotide precursors of the cell wall and inhibits the incorporation of 14C-labeled amino acids into cell walls at concentrations that do not inhibit the incorporation of amino acids into overall cellular protein. In 1967, Siewart and Strominger discovered that bacitracin inhibits a crucial step in cell wall biosynthesis, the enzymatic dephosphorylation of the C,, isoprenylpyrophosphate.o The biosynthesis of peptidoglycan involves the transfer of a sugar peptide unit from uridine nucleotide precursors of the cell wall to the C5, isoprenyl pyrophosphate, which facilitates the transfer of the cell wall building units across the cytoplasmic membrane. After the sugar peptide unit has been transferred to the growing peptidoglycan, the lipid is left in the pyrophosphate form. The monophosphate form of the lipid is required for reaction with the UDP sugars, and there are specific phosphatases in the membrane that catalyze the reaction shown below: Cjj isoprenyl-PP @ C,: isoprenyl-P + Pi.