1. In addition to poly(ribitol phosphate) the walls of a bacteriophage-resistant mutant of Staphylococcus aureus H contain glycerol phosphate residues that are not removed on digestion with trypsin or extraction with phenol. 2. The glycerol phosphate is present in a chain, containing three or four glycerol phosphate residues, which is covalently attached to the peptidoglycan through a phosphodi...

A glycerol lipoteichoic acid antigen from Streptococcus pyogenes 1-RP41 was found by rabbit erythrocyte hemolytic assay to activate the alternative complement pathway in human sera. Over a narrow concentration range of the teichoic acid, complement consumption was dose dependent, whereas at higher concentrations of the acid complement consumption could not be detected.

Teichoid acids are widely distributed in the walls of lactobacilli (Baddiley & Davison, 1961; Ikawa & Snell, 1960) and the intracellular variety has been found in all members of the genus so far examined. The serological importance of these compounds as group precipitinogens is now well established (Baddiley & Davison, 1961; Sharpe, Davison & Baddiley, 1964), and the detailed chemical structure...

The function(s) of gram-positive wall teichoic acid is emerging with recent findings that it is an important virulence factor in the pathogen Staphylococcus aureus and that it is crucial to proper rod-shaped cell morphology of Bacillus subtilis. Despite its importance, our understanding of teichoic acid biosynthesis remains incomplete. The TagB protein has been implicated in the priming step of...

Introduction Glycerol is the main byproduct of biodiesel production. Nowadays, glycerol surplus is becoming a matter of environmental and economic concern. Therefore, new ideas to convert glycerol in more valuable compounds are needed. Monoglyceride (MG) synthesis by glycerol (Gly) transesterification with fatty acid methyl esters (FAME), Figure 1, is an attractive option to transform this biom...

Cell walls were isolated from cells of Bacillus subtilis strain Marburg during synchronous outgrowth of spores, during the two synchronous cell divisions which followed, and at various times during exponential and early stationary growth. The amounts of teichoic acid and peptidoglycan components were determined in each cell wall preparation. The peptidoglycan is composed of hexosamine, alanine,...

The tar genes directing the synthesis of poly(ribitol phosphate), the main teichoic acid in Bacillus subtilis strain W23, were sequenced. They are organized in two divergently transcribed operons, tarABIJKL and tarDF, as are the tag genes specifying poly(glycerol phosphate) synthesis in B. subtilis 168. The features of the tar genes as well as the putative participation of their products in the...

Propionic acid production from glycerol was studied using Propionibacterium acidipropionici DSM 4900 cells immobilized on polyethylenimine-treated Poraver (PEI-Poraver) and Luffa (PEI-Luffa), respectively. Using PEI-Luffa, the average productivity, yield and concentration of propionic acid from 40 g L(-1) glycerol were 0.29 g L(-1) h(-1), 0.74 mol(PA) mol(Gly)(-1) and 20 g L(-1), respectively, ...

The morphology and cell wall composition of Bacillus coagulans, a facultative thermophile, were examined as a function of growth temperature. The morphology of the organism varied when it was grown at different temperatures; at 37 C the organism grew as individual cells which increased in length with increasing growth temperature. At 55 C it grew in long chains of cells. Cell wall prepared from...