{"doi":"10.1111/mmi.14969","title":"Roles of <scp>RodZ</scp> and class A <scp>PBP1b</scp> in the assembly and regulation of the peripheral peptidoglycan elongasome in ovoid‐shaped cells of <i>Streptococcus pneumoniae</i> <scp>D39</scp>","abstract":"RodZ of rod-shaped bacteria functions to link MreB filaments to the Rod peptidoglycan (PG) synthase complex that moves circumferentially perpendicular to the long cell axis, creating hoop-like sidewall PG. Ovoid-shaped bacteria, such as Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcus; Spn) that lack MreB, use a different modality for peripheral PG elongation that emanates from the midcell of dividing cells. Yet, S. pneumoniae encodes a RodZ homolog similar to RodZ in rod-shaped bacteria. We show here that the helix-turn-helix and transmembrane domains of RodZ(Spn) are essential for growth at 37°C. ΔrodZ mutations are suppressed by Δpbp1a, mpgA(Y488D), and ΔkhpA mutations that suppress ΔmreC, but not ΔcozE. Consistent with a role in PG elongation, RodZ(Spn) co-localizes with MreC and aPBP1a throughout the cell cycle and forms complexes and interacts with PG elongasome proteins and regulators. Depletion of RodZ(Spn) results in aberrantly shaped, non-growing cells and mislocalization of elongasome proteins MreC, PBP2b, and RodA. Moreover, Tn-seq reveals that RodZ(Spn), but not MreCD(Spn), displays a specific synthetic-viable genetic relationship with aPBP1b, whose function is unknown. We conclude that RodZ(Spn) acts as a scaffolding protein required for elongasome assembly and function and that aPBP1b, like aPBP1a, plays a role in elongasome regulation and possibly peripheral PG synthesis.","journal":"Molecular Microbiology","year":2022,"id":255587,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":20,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9532,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":903792,"name":"Irfan Manzoor","orcid":"0000-0003-3850-2690","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":903793,"name":"Merrin Joseph","orcid":"0000-0002-0943-920X","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":903794,"name":"Ziyun A. Ye","orcid":"0009-0007-5819-6957","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":903795,"name":"Mattia Benedet","orcid":"0000-0001-7086-796X","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":904433,"name":"Alessia Zanardi","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":678169,"name":"Zhongqing Ren","orcid":"0000-0003-1788-5362","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":678171,"name":"Xindan Wang","orcid":"0000-0001-6458-180X","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":903796,"name":"Orietta Massidda","orcid":"0000-0001-8823-2372","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":469000,"name":"Ho‐Ching Tiffany Tsui","orcid":"0000-0003-0849-874X","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":405419,"name":"Malcolm E. Winkler","orcid":"0000-0002-1482-2588","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":468998,"name":"Melissa M. Lamanna","orcid":"0000-0002-6535-7903","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":122,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:25:17.224217Z","pmid":"36001060","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}