Detection and Localization of a Muramidase type-2 Autolysin in Cell Walls of Lactobacillus delbrueckii ssp. bulgaricus.

The presence of cross-reacting muramidase in Lactobacillus delbrueckii ssp. bulgaricus ULl2 was shown by using monoclonal antibodies raised against an muramidase-2 of Enterococcus hirae ATCC 9790. The separation of protein by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis followed by Western immunoblot confirmed the presence of one cross-reacting band in Enterococcus hirae with an estimated molecular mass of 80 kDa, L. bulgaricus cultured cells harvested after 4 and 12 h were submitted to different autolysin releasing procedures and the liberated products were allowed to cross-react with muramidase-2 antibodies in order to estimate the efficiency of each treatment. Although the cultured cells harvested after 4 h yielded only a slight immune-reaction in Western immunoblots against these enzyme monoclonal antibodies, a strong signal was observed for the cell walls obtained from the same experimental conditions and treated with Triton X-100 surfactant. The same phenomenon was also observed by light fluorescence microscopy. Immune-labelling followed by optical and electron microscopy have shown that the muramidase-2 of L. bulgaricus ULl2 was essentially localized in the innermost part of the cell wall.(omitted)