Bacterial Lysins Effect On Bacteria

Bacteriophages are useful for many things, one being that they produce enzymes. One enzyme that they produce in particular is the lysine. Lysins are used majorly to digest the cell wall of bacteria. Bacteria have been increasingly gaining resistance to antibiotics and lysins have been used in animal models to control these specific bacteria. Scientists may need these lysins to stop bacteria from becoming more and more resistant to antibiotics. Bacteria is infected by bacteriophage when it inserts itself into the cell. The lytic system weakens the cell wall and this creates bacterial lysis. Due to this, the bacteriophage has a place to exit the cell and diffuse its newly created phage. Lysin builds up in the cytoplasm while the phage develops. It is waiting for the phage inside the cell to mature. Large DNA phage and small RNA/DNA phage use different …show more content…
This area is the part of the enzyme that controls any activity by a catalyst. The other area of the lysine, the C-terminal, is the domain that attaches itself to a substance found in the host bacteria’s cell wall. They break down the cell wall by breaking the bond peptidoglycan. The C-terminal is where the specificity comes into play, while the N-terminal is the area with the active site. Amino acids primary sequence is a chain and on this chain the N comes first and the C is on the end.
Electron microscopy is used to view bacteria and lysins. The bacteria that the lysins were applied to was looked at by this method and it showed holes in cell walls. This can be lethal to the cell. No one is sure whether or not one enzyme is capable of breaking enough of the bonds to completely kill an organism. One researcher, Loessner, believed that these phage enzymes were only used for one specific task, and many of them were needed to weaken and destroy the cell wall of an