ABSTRACT
The bacterial cell wall is not composed of a single substance; it is a complex of polymers which can be separated in various ways in the laboratory, although it is likely that they are bound together covalently in the wall of the living cell. The study of bacterial wall structure essentially started in 1951 when Salton and Horne1 reported chemical studies on cell wall fractions which could be seen to be pure by electron microscopy. Since that classical study, a great deal of work has been done, and the subject has been reviewed at fairly frequent intervals.2-8 Reviews on specialized aspects of the subject (e.g., biosynthesis, structure of O-antigens, etc.) are referred to in the appropriate section below.
