Teichoic Acid Is an Essential Polymer in
Bacillus subtilis
That Is Functionally Distinct from Teichuronic Acid
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abstract
ABSTRACT
Wall teichoic acids are anionic, phosphate-rich polymers linked to the peptidoglycan of gram-positive bacteria. In
Bacillus subtilis
, the predominant wall teichoic acid types are poly(glycerol phosphate) in strain 168 and poly(ribitol phosphate) in strain W23, and they are synthesized by the
tag
and
tar
gene products, respectively. Growing evidence suggests that wall teichoic acids are essential in
B. subtilis
; however, it is widely believed that teichoic acids are dispensable under phosphate-limiting conditions. In the work reported here, we carefully studied the dispensability of teichoic acid under phosphate-limiting conditions by constructing three new mutants. These strains, having precise deletions in
tagB
,
tagF
, and
tarD
, were dependent on xylose-inducible complementation from a distal locus (
amyE
) for growth. The
tarD
deletion interrupted poly(ribitol phosphate) synthesis in
B. subtilis
and represents a unique deletion of a
tar
gene. When teichoic acid biosynthetic proteins were depleted, the mutants showed a coccoid morphology and cell wall thickening. The new wall teichoic acid biogenesis mutants generated in this work and a previously reported
tagD
mutant were not viable under phosphate-limiting conditions in the absence of complementation. Cell wall analysis of
B. subtilis
grown under phosphate-limited conditions showed that teichoic acid contributed approximately one-third of the wall anionic content. These data suggest that wall teichoic acid has an essential function in
B. subtilis
that cannot be replaced by teichuronic acid.
