Journal article

Discovery of an archetypal protein transport system in bacterial outer membranes

J Selkrig, K Mosbahi, CT Webb, MJ Belousoff, AJ Perry, TJ Wells, F Morris, DL Leyton, M Totsika, MD Phan, N Celik, M Kelly, C Oates, EL Hartland, RM Robins-Browne, SH Ramarathinam, AW Purcell, MA Schembri, RA Strugnell, IR Henderson Show all

Nature Structural and Molecular Biology | Published : 2012

Abstract

Bacteria have mechanisms to export proteins for diverse purposes, including colonization of hosts and pathogenesis. A small number of archetypal bacterial secretion machines have been found in several groups of bacteria and mediate a fundamentally distinct secretion process. Perhaps erroneously, proteins called 'autotransporters' have long been thought to be one of these protein secretion systems. Mounting evidence suggests that autotransporters might be substrates to be secreted, not an autonomous transporter system. We have discovered a new translocation and assembly module (TAM) that promotes efficient secretion of autotransporters in proteobacteria. Functional analysis of the TAM in Citr..

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Grants

Awarded by Australian Research Council


Funding Acknowledgements

We thank D. Daley from the Department of Chemistry and Biophysics at Stockholm University for reagents, J. Rossjohn for critical discussions and A. Traven and T. Beilharz for critical comments on the manuscript. This work was made possible by the National Health & Medical Research Council (NHMRC) of Australia through an NHMRC Project grant (508911, to T. L. and A. W. P.), an NHMRC Program grant (606788, to T. L., E. L. H. and R. A. S.), an ARC Super Science grant (to T. L. and R. A. S.) and a BBSRC New Investigator grant to D. W. T. L. is an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow, E. L. H. and M. A. S. are ARC Future Fellows, A. W. P. is an NHMRC Senior Research Fellow, C. T. W., M. J. B. and A. J. P. are NHMRC Biomedical Fellows, D. L. L. is an ARC Super Science Fellow and J. S. is supported by an NHMRC Postgraduate Research Scholarship.