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Since the cell wall is required for bacterial survival, but is absent in some eukaryotes, several antibiotics (notably the penicillins and cephalosporins) stop bacterial infections by interfering with cell wall synthesis, while having no effects on human cells which have no cell wall, only a cell membrane.
The bacterial cell wall differs from that of all other organisms by the presence of peptidoglycan (poly-N-acetylglucosamine and N-acetylmuramic acid), which is located immediately outside of the cytoplasmic membrane. Peptidoglycan is responsible for the rigidity of the bacterial cell wall and for the determination of cell shape. It is ...
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 ...
Around the outside of the cell membrane is the cell wall. Bacterial cell walls are made of peptidoglycan (also called murein), which is made from polysaccharide chains cross-linked by peptides containing D-amino acids. [75] Bacterial cell walls are different from the cell walls of plants and fungi, which are made of cellulose and chitin ...
The glycocalyx (pl.: glycocalyces or glycocalyxes), also known as the pericellular matrix and cell coat, is a layer of glycoproteins and glycolipids which surround the cell membranes of bacteria, epithelial cells, and other cells. [1] Animal epithelial cells have a fuzz-like coating on the external surface of their plasma membranes.
The cell wall is essential to the survival of many bacteria, although L-form bacteria can be produced in the laboratory that lack a cell wall. [38] The antibiotic penicillin is able to kill bacteria by preventing the cross-linking of peptidoglycan and this causes the cell wall to weaken and lyse. [ 37 ]
A number of other bacteria—that are bounded by a single membrane, but stain gram-negative due to either lack of the peptidoglycan layer, as in the mycoplasmas, or their inability to retain the Gram stain because of their cell wall composition—also show close relationship to the gram-positive bacteria. For the bacterial cells bounded by a ...
Structure of a teichoic acid repeat unit from Micrococcaceae Structure of the lipoteichoic acid polymer. Teichoic acids (cf. Greek τεῖχος, teīkhos, "wall", to be specific a fortification wall, as opposed to τοῖχος, toīkhos, a regular wall) [1] are bacterial copolymers [2] of glycerol phosphate or ribitol phosphate and carbohydrates linked via phosphodiester bonds.