An archaellum filament composed of two alternating subunits

Lavinia Gambelli, Michail N. Isupov, Rebecca Conners, Mathew McLaren, Annett Bellack, Vicki Gold, Reinhard Rachel and Bertram Daum ()
Additional contact information
Lavinia Gambelli: University of Exeter
Michail N. Isupov: University of Exeter
Rebecca Conners: University of Exeter
Mathew McLaren: University of Exeter
Annett Bellack: University of Regensburg
Vicki Gold: University of Exeter
Reinhard Rachel: University of Regensburg
Bertram Daum: University of Exeter

Nature Communications, 2022, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract Archaea use a molecular machine, called the archaellum, to swim. The archaellum consists of an ATP-powered intracellular motor that drives the rotation of an extracellular filament composed of multiple copies of proteins named archaellins. In many species, several archaellin homologs are encoded in the same operon; however, previous structural studies indicated that archaellum filaments mainly consist of only one protein species. Here, we use electron cryo-microscopy to elucidate the structure of the archaellum from Methanocaldococcus villosus at 3.08 Å resolution. The filament is composed of two alternating archaellins, suggesting that the architecture and assembly of archaella is more complex than previously thought. Moreover, we identify structural elements that may contribute to the filament’s flexibility.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28337-1 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:13:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-28337-1

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

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-28337-1

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 ().