Towards a comprehensive view of the bacterial cell wall

Direct in vivo visualization, in full atomic detail, of the microbial cell wall and its stress-bearing structural architecture remains one of the prime challenges in microbiology. In the meantime, molecular modeling can provide a framework for explaining and predicting mechanisms involved in morphogenesis, bacterial cell growth and cell division, during which the wall and its major structural component - murein - have to protect the cell from osmotic pressure and multiple tensile forces. Here, we illustrate why the scaffold concept of murein architecture provides a more comprehensive representation of bacterial cell wall physiology than previous models.