Moss Chloroplasts Are Surrounded by a Peptidoglycan Wall Containing D-Amino Acids

It is believed that the plastids in green plants lost peptidoglycan (i.e., a bacterial cell wall-containing D-amino acids) during their evolution from an endosymbiotic cyanobacterium. Although wall-like structures could not be detected in the plastids of green plants, the moss Physcomitrella patens has the genes required to generate peptidoglycan (Mur genes), and knocking out these genes causes defects in chloroplast division. Here, we generated P. patens knockout lines (Delta Pp-ddl) for a homolog of the bacterial peptidoglycan-synthetic gene encoding D-Ala:D-Ala ligase. Delta Pp-ddl had a macrochloroplast phenotype, similar to other Mur knockout lines. The addition of D-Ala-D-Ala (DA-DA) to the medium suppressed the appearance of giant chloroplasts in Delta Pp-ddl, but the addition of L-Ala-L-Ala (LA-LA), DA-LA, LA-DA, or D-Ala did not. Recently, a metabolic method for labeling bacterial peptidoglycan was established using ethynyl-DA-DA (EDA-DA) and click chemistry to attach an azide-modified fluorophore to the ethynyl group. The Delta Pp-ddl line complemented with EDA-DA showed that moss chloroplasts are completely surrounded by peptidoglycan. Our findings strongly suggest that the moss plastids have a peptidoglycan wall containing D-amino acids. By contrast, no plastid phenotypes were observed in the T-DNA tagged ddl mutant lines of Arabidopsis thaliana.