Drug-resistant bacteria are becoming harder to treat, pushing scientists to look for new antibiotic targets. Researchers have now discovered that several unrelated viruses disable a key bacterial ...

A transporter which some bacteria use to recycle fragments of their cell wall has been discovered. Researchers found that the transporter controls resistance to certain kinds of cell-wall targeting ...

Blow up a long balloon and two things happen: it gets longer and it gets wider. Now imagine a living cell that inflates itself under enormous pressure and yet only grows longer, never adding width.

The bacterial cell wall must be constantly remodeled in order to grow and divide. This involves the close coordination of lytic enzymes and peptidoglycan synthesis. Researchers led by Martin ...

Endolysins are phage‐encoded enzymes that degrade the peptidoglycan layer of bacterial cell walls, a process essential for the release of progeny virions. Their ability to precisely cleave key bonds ...

Bacteria temporarily live without their cell wall if dangerous viruses are near. A remarkable feature, as the cell wall is a sturdy barrier against threats. Still, the discovery has a logical ...

We often hear about bacteria, but what exactly are they? A bacterium is a living organism that consists of a single cell (unicellular). It has ...