Figure 2.

Exogenous addition of endolysins and Artilysin^®s against the bacterial cell wall. The Gram-positive cell wall is directly accessible to exogenous endolysins (scissors) that cleave the peptidoglycan (PG) bonds, leading to the cell lysis (left panel). On the contrary, natural endolysins are not able to pass through the outer membrane (OM) of Gram-negative cells to attack the PG layers. Artilysin^®s are engineered enzymes with an additional LPS-destabilizing peptide (black) that enables the endolysin to reach the PG and cleave it (right panel). Adapted from [54].