Abstract
The digestion of single peptidoglycan chains of the recently proposed conformation (Formanek et al., 1974) can be described with the same enzymatic mechanism as proposed by Phillips for a hexasaccharide consisting of alternating N-acetylglucosamine, N-acetylmuramic acid residues (Phillips, 1966). It is shown by model building, that in a peptidoglycan lysozyme complex the peptide chains do not exhibit any sterical hindrance.
The digestion of the peptidoglycan sacculus by lysozyme may occur at lattice defects of its paracrystalline structure. A slit of about 30 å lenght and 10–15 å width between peptidoglycan micells may be sufficient for the attachment of lysozyme.
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Formanek, H. A three dimensional model of the digestion of peptidoglycan by lysozyme. Biophys. Struct. Mechanism 4, 1–14 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00538836
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00538836