Fig. 4: Impact of chitobiose (GlcNAc–GlcNAc) transport on peptidoglycan and cell-wall stress.
From: The unusual cell wall of the Lyme disease spirochaete Borrelia burgdorferi is shaped by a tick sugar
a, Comparative AFM analysis of purified peptidoglycan. Peptidoglycan from both the WT A3 strain and the A3/chbC chitobiose mutant transporter strain was deposited on mica and topological features imaged in AM–FM mode. Height features for each image are shown as colour maps (right) in nanometres. Scale bars, 5 µm (upper panel), 500 nm (middle panel) and 50 nm (lower panel). b,c, Recovery after cell-wall stress. WT A3 and A3/chbC strains were exposed to 0.25 M NaCl (544 mosmol) (b) or 1 mg ml−1 of lysozyme (c) for 24 h. After removing exogenous stress, cultures were plated in quadruplicate and colony-forming units were determined 9 d later. Statistical significance (*) was determined by two-tailed, unpaired Student’s t-test (NaCl: P = 1.37 × 10−5; lysozyme: P = 0.009).
