A novel assay of bacterial peptidoglycan synthesis for natural product screening

Although a large number of microbial metabolites have been discovered as inhibitors of bacterial peptidoglycan biosynthesis, only a few inhibitors were reported for the pathway of UDP-MurNAc-pentapeptide formation, partly because of the lack of assays appropriate for natural product screening. Among the pathway enzymes, D-Ala racemase (Alr), D-Ala:D-Ala ligase (Ddl) and UDP-MurNAc-tripeptide:D-Ala-D-Ala transferase (MurF) are particularly...