Peptidoglycan remodeling improves salt resilience of <i>Zymomonas mobilis</i>

Fossil fuels have negative impacts on the environment and will become limited in the next decades. Hence, alternative, sustainable energy sources need to be urgently established. Microbial fermentation of biomass for biofuel production presents a promising avenue. The gram-negative alpha-proteobacterium <i>Zymomonas mobilis</i> exhibits a superior capacity to convert sugars into ethanol, a clean, renewable, and widely used fuel. However, <i>Z. mobilis</i> has not been used as a first choice as a biofuel producer. The ethanol producer, baker's yeast <i>Saccharomyces cerevisiae</i>, serves as a model species in cell biology, but we lack fundamental understanding of the cell envelope biology of <i>Z. mobilis</i>, which would be critical to engineer a strain with increased resilience. Here, we demonstrate that knowledge about cell envelope biogenesis factors in <i>Z. mobilis</i> can help engineering optimized strains that grow under conditions of biofuel production.