Title: Bacterial cell wall mechanics, experiments and modeling
Abstract: Bacteria mechanically protect themselves by covalently linked peptidoglycan (PG) cell walls that preserve cellular morphology and contain high osmotic pressures, controlled by mechanosensitive membrane channels. As a bacterium grows, the cell wall undergoes continuous expansion. Despite a good understanding of the molecular components and the assembly machineries of the cell wall, it remains largely unknown how the mesoscopic mechanical properties of the cell wall emerge from the properties and arrangement of molecular components. I will introduce our AFM-based experimental approach to probe bacterial mechanics and I will introduce a coarse-grained physical model of the bacterial cell wall, consisting of a 2D spring network, with parameters and geometry based on known molecular details, that predicts the mesoscopic mechanical response of the cell wall for the Gram-negative bacterium Escherichia coli.