Conversion of free lipoprotein to the murein-bound form.

The time-course of the conversion of free lipoprotein to the murein-bound form was followed after pulsing growing cells of Escherichia coli for 2 min with [35S]methionine. The conversion of the free to the bound form was measured by two independent methods. First, the appearance of murein-bound lipoprotein was determined in isolated murein sacculi after extraction with hot 4% sodium dodecylsulphate. Second, the ratio of various forms of the bound lipoprotein to the free lipoprotein was determined in outer membranes. Both methods indicated that the half-maximal amount of bound lipoprotein was reached within one-sixth of a generation time.