On Understanding Bacterial L-Forms: Cell Wall-Less or Not?

Cell-wall deficient L. monocytogenes L-forms feature abrogated pathogenicity

Stable L-forms are cell wall-deficient bacteria which are able to multiply and propagate indefinitely, despite the absence of a rigid peptidoglycan cell wall. We investigated whether L-forms of the intracellular pathogen L. monocytogenes possibly retain pathogenicity, and if they could trigger an innate immune response. While phagocytosis of L. monocytogenes L-forms by non-activated macrophages...

Cell-wall deficiencies in L-forms of Staphylococcus aureus.

Growth of bacterial L forms and bacterial protoplasts.

Numerous morphological, physiological, and biochemical studies have been carried out on bacterial forms exhibiting a pronounced osmotic fragility (for review see Weibull, 1958b). Naked bacterial protoplasts, obtained by means of a complete removal of the cell wall by lysozyme in a sucrose medium (Weibull, 1953) offer an example of such an osmotically fragile structure. Osmotically sensitive for...

Bacterial Cell Wall-induced Immunosuppression

Asingle intraperitoneal injection of bacterial cell walls derived from groupA streptococci (SCW)' into susceptible rats results in the development of acute and chronic erosive polyarthritis (1, 2) . The pathology of the lesion leading to joint destruction has been shown to be aT cell-dependent, cell-mediated response to the deposition of the group A streptococcal peptidoglycan-polysaccharide po...

Bacterial L-forms on tap: an improved methodology to generate Bacillus subtilis L-forms heralds a new era of research.

Bacterial L-forms are cell wall-less forms of bacteria that usually grow with a conventional cell wall. Despite being important for research, L-forms are difficult to generate reproducibly and research in this area is challenging. Domínguez-Cuevas et al. (2011) report a method to rapidly, quantitatively and reproducibly generate populations of L-forms in Bacillus subtilis. Importantly, the meth...