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Chemical Synthesis Of Peptidoglycan Mimetic–Disaccharide-Tetrapeptide Conjugate And Its Hydrolysis By Bacteriophage T5, Rb43 And Rb49 L-Alanyl-D-Glutamate Peptidases, Viatcheslav Azev, Alexey Chulin, Maxim Molchanov, Dmitry Prokhorov, Galina Mikoulinskaia, Vladimir N. Uversky, Viktor Kutyshenko

Molecular Medicine Faculty Publications

Endolysins of a number of bacteriophages, including coliphages T5, RB43, and RB49, target the peptidoglycans of the bacterial cell wall. The backbone of these bacterial peptidoglycans consist of alternating N-acetylglucosamine and N-acetylmuramic acid residues that is further “reinforced” by the peptide subunits. Because of the mesh-like structure and insolubility of peptidoglycans, the processes of the peptidoglycan binding and hydrolysis by enzymes cannot be studied by spectral methods. To overcome these issues we synthesized and analyzed here one of the simplest water soluble peptidoglycan mimetics.

A compound has been synthesized that mimics the peptidoglycan fragment of the bacterial cell wall, N-acetylglucosaminyl-β(1-4)-N-acetylmuramoyl-l-alanyl-γ-d-glutamyl-l-alanyl-d-alanine. …