Research

The Weiss lab has been characterizing bacterial cell division proteins that contain a peptidoglycan (PG)-binding domain called a SPOR domain.  Although it has been known for almost 10 years that SPOR domains target proteins to the division site by binding to a cell wall structure that marks septal PG, the nature of that structure was unclear.  In a paper published in PNAS in 2015 we provided definitive evidence SPOR domains bind to PG at sites where the carbohydrate backbone has been denuded of peptide side chains  (Research article).  These structures, sometimes called "denuded glycans," are created by cell wall hydrolases involved in daughter cell separation.