muramic acid and gram staining

[MudPhud20XX]

FA says Chlamydia lacks muramic acid and this seems to be the reason it's not stained well with Gram. Can anyone explain this a bit further? Many thanks in advance.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Phloston]

FA says Chlamydia lacks muramic acid and this seems to be the reason it's not stained well with Gram. Can anyone explain this a bit further? Many thanks in advance.

There was some question that showed up on some NBME I believe that mentioned lack of muramic acid in a bacterium and the answer was chlamydia. But you're not going to get gram staining with chlamydia because it's intracellular. When someone with discharge gets a culture done and "nothing grew," the diagnosis is chlamydia.

 

[TheNsg300]

I would think that is becuz N-acetylmuramic acid is one of the constituents of peptidoglycan and its absence in the bacterial cell wall would render the cell unable to hold on to the crystaline violet stain of grams,,more importantly though like mycoplasma (without peptidoglycan cell wall) it would render these organisms resistant to ur typical beta-lactams and susceptible to macrolides,,