Bacteria surround themselves with cell walls to maintain cell rigidity and protect against environmental insults. Here we review chemical and biochemical techniques employed to study bacterial cell wall biogenesis. Recent advances including the ability to isolate critical intermediates, metabolic approaches for probe incorporation, and isotopic labeling techniques have provided critical insight into the biochemistry of cell walls. Fundamental manuscripts that have used these techniques to discover cell wall-interacting proteins, flippases, and cell wall stoichiometry are discussed in detail. The review highlights that these powerful methods and techniques have exciting potential to identify and characterize new targets for antibiotic development.

细菌用细胞壁包围自身，以保持细胞刚性并防止环境侵害。在这里，我们回顾了用于研究细菌细胞壁生物发生的化学和生化技术。包括分离关键中间体的能力、探针掺入的代谢方法和同位素标记技术在内的最新进展为细胞壁的生物化学提供了重要的见解。详细讨论了使用这些技术发现细胞壁相互作用蛋白、翻转酶和细胞壁化学计量的基本手稿。该评论强调，这些强大的方法和技术在识别和表征抗生素开发的新目标方面具有令人兴奋的潜力。