{
  "id": 9487118,
  "title": "Fluorescence-activated cell sorting of Escherichia coli L-forms reveals maintained synchronized nucleic acid synthesis dynamics",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/23/fluorescence-activated-cell-sorting-of-escherichia-coli-l-forms",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-09-23T00:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "bioRxiv",
    "slug": "biorxiv",
    "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.21.753196v1?rss=1"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "L-form bacteria, wall-deficient variants of Escherichia coli, proliferate without an intact cell wall or typical cell division machinery. While their survival and proliferation mechanisms have been explored, the coordinated regulation of cell cycle processes like DNA and RNA synthesis in L-forms remains unclear. Researchers employed fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) to analyze E. coli L-forms, revealing two reversible subpopulations with different intracellular nucleic acid levels. These subpopulations rapidly readjusted their heterogeneous distribution after sorting. Notably, cells initially low in nucleic acids experienced a synchronized population-wide surge in nucleic acid synthesis within 24 hours, confirmed through time-lapse fluorescence microscopy. This transient increase in nucleic acid synthesis occurred during early exponential growth, predominantly driven by RNA synthesis rather than DNA synthesis. Similar patterns were observed in liquid cultures stained with SYTO and DAPI dyes. These findings indicate that RNA levels peak before declining as L-form cultures face nutrient limitation, much like their walled counterparts. The study demonstrates that FACS can be an effective method for investigating L-form biology and underscores the retention of coordinated, population-wide regulation of nucleic acid synthesis in L-forms, even without an intact cell wall or canonical cell division.",
  "summary": "L-form bacteria are wall-deficient variants that proliferate without an intact cell wall and independently of the canonical cell division machinery. Despite increasing insights into how L-forms survive and proliferate without a cell wall, fundamental questions regarding how cell cycle processes, including DNA and RNA synthesis, are coordinated in the wall-less state remain poorly understood.…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}