Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
As in other organisms, the bacterial cell wall provides structural integrity to the cell. In prokaryotes, the primary function of the cell wall is to protect the cell from internal turgor pressure caused by the much higher concentrations of proteins and other molecules inside the cell compared to its external environment.
The plasma membrane or bacterial cytoplasmic membrane is composed of a phospholipid bilayer and thus has all of the general functions of a cell membrane such as acting as a permeability barrier for most molecules and serving as the location for the transport of molecules into the cell.
Enclosing the cell is the cell envelope, generally consisting of a plasma membrane covered by a cell wall which, for some bacteria, may be further covered by a third layer called a capsule. Though most prokaryotes have both a cell membrane and a cell wall, there are exceptions such as Mycoplasma (bacteria) and Thermoplasma (archaea) which only ...
An S-layer (surface layer) is a part of the cell envelope found in almost all archaea, as well as in many types of bacteria. [1] [2] The S-layers of both archaea and bacteria consists of a monomolecular layer composed of only one (or, in a few cases, two) identical proteins or glycoproteins. [3]
Lipopolysaccharide, now more commonly known as endotoxin, [1] is a collective term for components of the outermost membrane of the cell envelope of gram-negative bacteria, such as E. coli and Salmonella [2] with a common structural architecture.
Although bacteria are conventionally divided into two main groups—Gram-positive and Gram-negative, based upon their Gram-stain retention property—this classification system is ambiguous as it can refer to three distinct aspects (staining result, cell-envelope organization, taxonomic group), which do not necessarily coalesce for some bacterial species.
It consists of 14 proteins that assemble into three sub-complexes: a phage tail-like tubule, a phage baseplate-like structure, and cell-envelope spanning membrane complex. These three subcomplexes work together to transport proteins across the bacterial cell envelope and into a target cell through a contractile mechanism [10]
The composition of the outer membrane is distinct from that of the inner cytoplasmic cell membrane - among other things, the outer leaflet of the outer membrane of many gram-negative bacteria includes a complex lipopolysaccharide whose lipid portion acts as an endotoxin - and in some bacteria such as E. coli it is linked to the cell's ...