Localization of the vegetative cell wall hydrolases LytC, LytE, and LytF on the Bacillus subtilis cell surface and stability of these enzymes to cell wall-bound or extracellular proteases.

LytF, LytE, and LytC are vegetative cell wall hydrolases in Bacillus subtilis. Immunofluorescence microscopy showed that an epitope-tagged LytF fusion protein (LytF-3xFLAG) in the wild-type background strain was localized at cell separation sites and one of the cell poles of rod-shaped cells during vegetative growth. However, in a mutant lacking both the cell surface protease WprA and the extracellular protease Epr, the fusion protein was observed at both cell poles in addition to cell separation sites. This suggests that LytF is potentially localized at cell separation sites and both cell poles during vegetative growth and that WprA and Epr are involved in LytF degradation. The localization pattern of LytE-3xFLAG was very similar to that of LytF-3xFLAG during vegetative growth. However, especially in the early vegetative growth phase, there was a remarkable difference between the shape of cells expressing LytE-3xFLAG and the shape of cells expressing LytF-3xFLAG. In the case of LytF-3xFLAG, it seemed that the signals in normal rod-shaped cells were stronger than those in long-chain cells. In contrast, the reverse was found in the case of LytE-3xFLAG. This difference may reflect the dependence on different sigma factors for gene expression. The results support and extend the previous finding that LytF and LytE are cell-separating enzymes. On the other hand, we observed that cells producing LytC-3xFLAG are uniformly coated with the fusion protein after the middle of the exponential growth phase, which supports the suggestion that LytC is a major autolysin that is not associated with cell separation.