Bacterial Cell Wall-Building Protein Observed Up Close (IMAGE)

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Bacterial Cell Wall-Building Protein Observed Up Close

Caption

The figure illustrates bacterial cell wall synthesis as mediated by an enzyme called MraY (yellow/green). The enzyme modifies the cell wall building blocks (bricks) with a carrier lipid (cyan) so that they can cross the cell membrane (gray surface) where they are subsequently polymerized to form the cell wall. This image relates to a paper that appeared in the 30 Aug., 2013, issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by Ben Chung at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., and colleagues was titled, "Crystal Structure of MraY, an Essential Membrane Enzyme for Bacterial Cell Wall Synthesis."

Credit

[Image courtesy of Ben Chung and Seok-Yong Lee]

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