title: Building a bridge to new antibiotics.
abstract: Gram-positive bacteria modify their peptidoglycan layers with teichoic acid polymers via a highly conserved disaccharide bridge. Inhibition of the biosynthesis of this bridge is a potential antibiotic strategy that can be explored now that purified versions of the enzymes TagA and TagB and their substrates are accessible for the first time.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and the Plant Sciences Institute, 2756 Gilman Hall, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, USA. npohl@iastate.edu
authors.forename: Nicola L
authors.initials: NL
authors.lastname: Pohl
mesh_terms: D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents / Q000138:chemical synthesis* / Q000494:pharmacology; D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000187:drug effects / Q000378:metabolism; D002240:Carbohydrate Sequence; D002473:Cell Wall / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology; D006090:Gram-Negative Bacteria / Q000187:drug effects; D006094:Gram-Positive Bacteria / Q000187:drug effects; D008074:Lipoproteins / Q000187:drug effects / Q000378:metabolism; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D013682:Teichoic Acids / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents; D001426:Bacterial Proteins; D008074:Lipoproteins; C092406:TagA protein, bacteria; D013682:Teichoic Acids