Priming and elongation: dissection of the lipoteichoic acid biosynthetic pathway in Gram-positive bacteria

The biosynthesis of lipoteichoic acids is a potential target for the development of novel antimicrobials against significant Firmicute pathogens. Excellent progress has been made in recent years towards understanding the biochemistry and genetics of polyglycerophosphate lipoteichoic acid biosynthesis but it has remained unclear whether this pathway requires an initial ‘priming’ reaction to initiate synthesis on the glycolipid anchor. Recent work from the laboratory of Angelika Gründling, including a new study by Wörmann et al. in this issue of Molecular Microbiology, provides confirmation of the priming step and further insights into the functional redundancy of lipoteichoic acid biosynthesis enzymes in Bacillus subtilis.