Overproduction of penicillin-binding protein 2 and its inactive variants causes morphological changes and lysis in Escherichia coli.

Penicillin-binding protein 2 (PBP 2) has long been known to be essential for rod-shaped morphology in gram-negative bacteria, including Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. In the course of earlier studies with P. aeruginosa PBP 2, we observed that E.