New solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance approaches to decipher the molecular organization of cell walls in intact cells

Abstract

Most microbes possess a "cell surface", i.e. a critical surface architecture which can have several purposes: protection against the external environment, a mimicry strategy to evade host defenses, or a pathogenic molecular weapon to damage host cell membranes. Molecular understanding of the cell envelope remains one of the most active research fields in microbiology, because many essential processes related to the survival of the microbe and its ability to infect host cells are taking place at the cell surface and are driven by surface components. The ability to study such cell surfaces at a molecular level is of prime interest, to understand how pathogenic and parasitic microbes can survive, proliferate and carry out their harmful action. Current state-of-the-art analytical approaches to study cell surface have two main drawbacks: (i) they are destructive or rely on the extraction of weakly-bound molecules, requiring chemical or biochemical methods prior to the analysis. (ii) Because each component is quantified in isolation, the global organization and interplay between components is missing. Here we present our recent advances using solid-state NMR spectroscopy to investigate the molecular organization of fungal, bacterial, yeast and plant cell surface at atomic resolution (1-4).

References

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