Although the dd-CPases are usually the most abundant PBPs in the cell, they are not essential for bacterial survival (Denome et al., 1999) and the in vivo purposes of these seemingly nonessential and redundant enzymes are mostly unknown. The

exception to the above statement is the E. coli protein PBP 5, which helps maintain the normal morphology of this organism even in the absence of seven other PBPs (Nelson & Young, 2001). In the absence of PBP 5 by itself, the cells exhibit small morphological aberrations, but as more PBPs are deleted, the cells become considerably misshapen (Nelson & Young, 2000, 2001). PBP 5 consists of two major domains, I and II, oriented almost at right angles to one another (Davies et al., 2001; Nicholas et al., 2003). The dd-CPase active Roxadustat purchase site selleck products is located in domain I and is responsible for maintaining normal cell shape (Nelson et al., 2002; Ghosh & Young, 2003). Domain II is composed mostly of β-sheets and may lift the enzymatic domain away from the inner membrane and into the periplasm toward the peptidoglycan

substrate (Nelson et al., 2002; Ghosh & Young, 2003). At its extreme carboxyl terminus, at the base of domain II, PBP 5 has a short 18-amino acid (Jackson & Pratt, 1987) amphipathic helix that tethers the protein to the outer face of the inner membrane (Nelson et al., 2002; Ghosh & Young, 2003). The closest homologue to PBP 5 from any organism is PBP 6, from E. coli itself. Interestingly, PBP 6, although ∼65% identical to PBP 5, cannot restore normal shape to aberrant cells, as can PBP 5 (Ghosh & Young, 2003). Domain swap and mutagenesis experiments indicate that the relevant differences

between the two enzymes localize to domain I, and, in fact, to a small stretch of 20 amino acids that surrounds the canonical KTG motif of the active site (Nelson et al., 2002; Ghosh & Young, 2003). For convenience, we will refer to this 20-amino acid segment as the ‘morphology maintenance domain’ (MMD) (Ghosh & Young, 2003) (Fig. 1). When PBP 6 is engineered so that its MMD is replaced by that from PBP 5, the mosaic protein (PBP 656) complements the shape defects of the E. coli mutants as well as wild-type PBP 5 (Ghosh Erythromycin & Young, 2003). Conversely, replacing the MMD of PBP 5 with that from PBP 6 (generating PBP 565) eliminates the ability to complement. PBPs 5 and 6 differ by seven residues in this peptide fragment, but only two, Asp 218 and Lys 219, seem to be necessary to confer on PBP 656 the complementation attributes of PBP 5 (Ghosh & Young, 2003) (Fig. 1). However, mutation of these two amino acids does not eliminate the ability of PBP 5 to complement shape defects, suggesting that other structural features blunt the effects of these changes in the wild-type protein.