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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Jacob BiboyORCiD, Professor Waldemar Vollmer
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© The Author(s) 2026.Rod-shaped bacteria such as Bacillus subtilis achieve their shape by using Rod complexes to synthesize anisotropic peptidoglycan and by limiting isotropic peptidoglycan synthesis by PBP1. Wall teichoic acids are also required for rod shape, but their role is unclear. Here we use single-cell microfluidics and microscopy to show that wall teichoic acids promote rod shape by preventing the formation of nanoscopic pores in the B. subtilis cell wall. Wall teichoic acid depletion led to pore formation within minutes, coinciding with a rapid increase in PBP1-mediated peptidoglycan synthesis, which became essential for growth, and transient arrest of Rod complexes before the onset of amorphous growth. A synthetically lethal cell wall hydrolase, LytE, also became essential during wall teichoic acid depletion, meaning that PBP1 and LytE cooperatively execute amorphous growth in the absence of teichoic acids. Our results show that wall teichoic acids maintain cell shape by preventing cell wall pore formation, thereby promoting Rod complex activity and preventing PBP1 activity.
Author(s): Barber F, Akbary Z, Yuan Z, Biboy J, Vollmer W, Rojas ER
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Nature Microbiology
Year: 2026
Pages: Epub ahead of print
Online publication date: 26/05/2026
Acceptance date: 21/04/2026
Date deposited: 08/06/2026
ISSN (electronic): 2058-5276
Publisher: Nature Research
URL: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-026-02368-6
DOI: 10.1038/s41564-026-02368-6
Data Access Statement: All datasets presented herein are publicly available in figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.8406249 (ref. 72). Raw data for uncropped immunoblots are provided as Source data with this paper. All code used here is publicly available in Zenodo at https://doi.org/ 10.5281/zenodo.19461850 (ref. 73)
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