CryoEM reveals the structure of an archaeal pilus involved in twitching motility

Matthew C. Gaines, Shamphavi Sivabalasarma, Michail N. Isupov, Risat Ul Haque, Mathew McLaren, Cyril Hanus, Vicki A. M. Gold, Sonja-Verena Albers and Bertram Daum ()
Additional contact information
Matthew C. Gaines: University of Exeter
Shamphavi Sivabalasarma: University of Freiburg
Michail N. Isupov: University of Exeter
Risat Ul Haque: University of Exeter
Mathew McLaren: University of Exeter
Cyril Hanus: Inserm UMR1266 - Université Paris Cité
Vicki A. M. Gold: University of Exeter
Sonja-Verena Albers: University of Freiburg
Bertram Daum: University of Exeter

Nature Communications, 2024, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: Abstract Amongst the major types of archaeal filaments, several have been shown to closely resemble bacterial homologues of the Type IV pili (T4P). Within Sulfolobales, member species encode for three types of T4P, namely the archaellum, the UV-inducible pilus system (Ups) and the archaeal adhesive pilus (Aap). Whereas the archaellum functions primarily in swimming motility, and the Ups in UV-induced cell aggregation and DNA-exchange, the Aap plays an important role in adhesion and twitching motility. Here, we present a cryoEM structure of the Aap of the archaeal model organism Sulfolobus acidocaldarius. We identify the component subunit as AapB and find that while its structure follows the canonical T4P blueprint, it adopts three distinct conformations within the pilus. The tri-conformer Aap structure that we describe challenges our current understanding of pilus structure and sheds new light on the principles of twitching motility.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45831-w 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:15:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-024-45831-w

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

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-45831-w

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 ().