Not something we tested explicitly but the catalytic domains involved have not been shown to cleave pseudomurein. Also, very few pseudomurein producers encode PGHs, ruling out auto-lysis as the main function.

PGHs are unlikely to be the sole kind of weapons deployed by archaea to kill bacteria. We close by discussing a road map to uncover more of the archaeal arsenal deployed against bacteria. Have a read for more details! 6/6

We experimentally show that two PGHs encoded by salt-loving archaeon Halogranum salarium B-1 do kill one of the predicted targets, salt-tolerant bacterium Halalkalibacterium halodurans. 5/6

We developed a structural homology-based pipeline to infer the putative bacterial targets of these proteins and found that most seem to target monoderm bacteria living in the same environment as the producer. 4/6

Here, we show that about 5% of archaea encode peptidoglycan hydrolases (PGHs) in their genomes, though most archaea do not use peptidoglycan. They are enriched on plasmids and display a high level of structural conservation with their bacterial counterpart, hinting at their use as weapons. 3/6

Archaea and bacteria live in the same environments across the biosphere, yet only a handful of studies describe antagonistic interactions between the two domains of life (Atanasova et al., 2013 is particularly relevant). 2/6