Cell-Wall Recycling in Pseudomonas aeruginosa and the Nexus to Antibiotic Resistance

Members of Enterobacteriaceae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa have the ability to sense damage inflicted to their cell wall by beta-lactam antibiotics. The process involves chemical signaling, which will be a subject of my presentation. A primary mechanism for this sensing and signaling involves the events of cell-wall recycling. The cell wall is degraded for recycling and then the cell wall is synthesized de novo for the repair function. The recycling events get initiated by the functions of a family of 11 lytic transglycosylases in P. aeruginosa, which generate the signaling factors that influence transcriptional events in the cytoplasm. The structures and mechanisms of these enzymes and those of the early cytoplasmic steps of recycling have been the subject of study in my lab, which I will disclose in my presentation.