Although prokaryotes ordinarily undergo binary fission to produce two identical daughter
cells, some are able to undergo alternative developmental pathways that produce daughter …

The quest for bacterial survival is exemplified by spores formed by some Firmicutes
members. They turn up everywhere one looks, and their ubiquity reflects adaptations to the …

The cell wall envelope of gram-positive bacteria is a macromolecular, exoskeletal organelle
that is assembled and turned over at designated sites. The cell wall also functions as a …

Most bacteria have multiple peptidoglycan hydrolases capable of cleaving covalent bonds in
peptidoglycan sacculi or its fragments. An overview of the different classes of peptidoglycan …

Under conditions that are not conducive to growth, such as nutrient depletion, many
members of the orders Bacillales and Clostridiales can sporulate, generating dormant and …

The structure and chemical composition of bacterial spores differ considerably from those of
vegetative cells. These differences largely account for the unique resistance properties of …

In response to starvation, bacilli and clostridia undergo a specialized program of
development that results in the production of a highly resistant dormant cell type known as …

The normal, unmodified glycan strands of bacterial peptidoglycan consist of alternating
residues of β-1, 4-linked N-acetylmuramic acid and N-acetylglucosamine. In many species …

Autolysins are bacteriolytic enzymes that digest the cellwall peptidoglycan of the bacteria
that produce them (Shockman & Ho $ ltje, 1994). Although potentially lethal, autolysins …

Spores of Bacillus subtilis with a mutation in spoVF cannot synthesize dipicolinic acid (DPA)
and are too unstable to be purified and studied in detail. However, the spores of a strain …