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Type IV Pilus Structure by Cryo-Electron Microscopy and Crystallography: Implications for Pilus Assembly and Functions
- Source :
- Molecular Cell. 23(5):651-662
- Publication Year :
- 2006
- Publisher :
- Elsevier BV, 2006.
-
Abstract
- Type IV pili (T4P) are long, thin, flexible filaments on bacteria that undergo assembly-disassembly from inner membrane pilin subunits and exhibit astonishing multifunctionality. Neisseria gonorrhoeae (gonococcal or GC) T4P are prototypic virulence factors and immune targets for increasingly antibiotic-resistant human pathogens, yet detailed structures are unavailable for any T4P. Here, we determined a detailed experimental GC-T4P structure by quantitative fitting of a 2.3 A full-length pilin crystal structure into a 12.5 A resolution native GC-T4P reconstruction solved by cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and iterative helical real space reconstruction. Spiraling three-helix bundles form the filament core, anchor the globular heads, and provide strength and flexibility. Protruding hypervariable loops and posttranslational modifications in the globular head shield conserved functional residues in pronounced grooves, creating a surprisingly corrugated pilus surface. These results clarify T4P multifunctionality and assembly-disassembly while suggesting unified assembly mechanisms for T4P, archaeal flagella, and type II secretion system filaments.
- Subjects :
- Models, Molecular
Pilus assembly
Cryo-electron microscopy
Molecular Sequence Data
Pilus retraction
Flagellum
Crystallography, X-Ray
Models, Biological
Pilus
Bacterial Adhesion
Microbiology
Protein filament
Humans
Amino Acid Sequence
Molecular Biology
Type II secretion system
biology
Cryoelectron Microscopy
Cell Biology
Neisseria gonorrhoeae
Pilin
Fimbriae, Bacterial
Biophysics
biology.protein
Fimbriae Proteins
Protein Processing, Post-Translational
Sequence Alignment
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 10972765
- Volume :
- 23
- Issue :
- 5
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Molecular Cell
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....5f3e0477309c19481b99e43537d71e68
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.molcel.2006.07.004