Encyclopedia > Peptidoglycan

  Article Content

Peptidoglycan

Peptidoglycans are structural components of bacterial cell walls. The peptidoglycan layer is thicker in Gram-positive bacteria than in Gram-negative bacteria.

Chemical structure

The peptidoglycan layer in the bacterial cell wall is a lattice structure formed from linear chains of two alternating amino sugars, namely N-acetyl glucosamine[?] (GlcNAc) and N-acetyl muramic acid[?] (MurNAc). Each MurNAc is attached to a short (5 residues) amino acid chain. Cross links between amino acids in different linear amino sugar chains result in a 2-dimensional sheet that is strong and rigid. The exact amino acid sequence and the exact overall structure vary with the bacterial species.

Biological purpose

Peptidoglycans serve a structural role, giving bacterial cell walls their shape and strength and counteracting the osmotic pressure of the cytoplasm.



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Springs, New York

... couples living together, 8.9% have a female householder with no husband present, and 34.9% are non-families. 26.1% of all households are made up of individuals and 9.6% ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 52.5 ms