The characteristics of autolysins associated with cell separation in .

The peptidoglycan hydrolases responsible for the cell separation of cells are collectively referred to as autolysins. However, the role of each autolysin in the cell separation of is not fully understood. In this study, we constructed a series of cell separation-associated autolysin deficient strains and strains overexpressing the transcription factors SlrR and SinR, and the morphological changes of these strains in liquid culture were observed. The results showed that the absence of D,L-endopeptidases CwlS and LytF only increased the cell chain length in the early exponential phase. The absence of D,L-endopeptidase LytE or N-acetylmuramyl-L-alanine amidase LytC can cause cells to form chains throughout the growth of , although the cell chain length was significantly shortened during the stationary phase. However, the absence of peptidoglycan N-acetylglucosaminidase LytD only caused minor defect in cell separation. Therefore, we concluded that LytE and LytC were the major autolysins that ensure the timely separation of daughter cells, whereas CwlS, LytF, and LytD were the minor autolysins. In addition, overexpression of the transcription factors SinR and SlrR in the mutant enabled cells to form ultra-long chains in the vegetative phase, and its biomass level was basically the same as that of the wild type. This led to the conclusion that besides inhibiting the expression of and , the SinR-SlrR complex also has other potential mechanisms to inhibit cell separation.In this study, the effects of CwlS, LytC, LytD, LytF, LytE, and SinR-SlrR complex on the cell separation of at different growth phases were studied, and an ultra-long-chained strain was constructed. In microbial fermentation, due to its large cell size, this ultra-long-chained strain may be more likely to be precipitated or intercepted during the removal of bacterial process with centrifugation and membrane filtration as the main methods, which is crucial to improve the purity of the product.