Bidirectional contraction of a type six secretion system

Piotr Szwedziak and Martin Pilhofer ()
Additional contact information
Piotr Szwedziak: Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich
Martin Pilhofer: Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract Contractile injection systems (CISs) mediate cell-cell interactions by a phage tail-like apparatus. Their conserved mechanism relies on the anchoring of the proximal end of a sheath-tube module to a membrane, followed by contraction of the sheath towards the attachment site and ejection of the inner tube. Here we reveal a major variation of the CIS mechanism in the type six secretion system (T6SS) of enteroaggregative Escherichia coli (EAEC). We show that both ends of the sheath-tube module are attached to opposite sides of the cell, enabling the structure to contract in two opposite directions. The protein TssA1 mediates the interaction of the distal end with the cell envelope, the termination of tail elongation, and non-canonical contraction towards the distal end. We provide a framework for the molecular processes at the T6SS distal end. Further research will address whether bidirectional contraction allows for bidirectional effector secretion. The unrecognized concept of non-canonical contractions could be relevant to biofilms of the human intestine.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09603-1 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-09603-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-09603-1

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().