Structural and functional diversity of type IV secretion systems

TRD Costa, JB Patkowski, K Macé, PJ Christie… - Nature Reviews …, 2024 - nature.com
Considerable progress has been made in recent years in the structural and molecular
biology of type IV secretion systems in Gram-negative bacteria. The latest advances have …

Plasmids pick a bacterial partner before committing to conjugation

G Frankel, S David, WW Low, C Seddon… - Nucleic Acids …, 2023 - academic.oup.com
Bacterial conjugation was first described by Lederberg and Tatum in the 1940s following the
discovery of the F plasmid. During conjugation a plasmid is transferred unidirectionally from …

Cryo-electron microscopy of the f1 filamentous phage reveals insights into viral infection and assembly

R Conners, RI León-Quezada, M McLaren… - Nature …, 2023 - nature.com
Phages are viruses that infect bacteria and dominate every ecosystem on our planet. As well
as impacting microbial ecology, physiology and evolution, phages are exploited as tools in …

Real-time visualisation of the intracellular dynamics of conjugative plasmid transfer

A Couturier, C Virolle, K Goldlust… - Nature …, 2023 - nature.com
Conjugation is a contact-dependent mechanism for the transfer of plasmid DNA between
bacterial cells, which contributes to the dissemination of antibiotic resistance. Here, we use …

Assembly mechanism of a Tad secretion system secretin-pilotin complex

M Tassinari, M Rudzite, A Filloux, HH Low - Nature Communications, 2023 - nature.com
The bacterial T ight ad herence S ecretion S ystem (TadSS) assembles surface pili that drive
cell adherence, biofilm formation and bacterial predation. The structure and mechanism of …

DPAM: A domain parser for AlphaFold models

J Zhang, RD Schaeffer, J Durham, Q Cong… - Protein …, 2023 - Wiley Online Library
The recent breakthroughs in structure prediction, where methods such as AlphaFold
demonstrated near‐atomic accuracy, herald a paradigm shift in structural biology. The 200 …

Non-antibiotic compounds associated with humans and the environment can promote horizontal transfer of antimicrobial resistance genes

I Alav, MMC Buckner - Critical Reviews in Microbiology, 2024 - Taylor & Francis
Horizontal gene transfer plays a key role in the global dissemination of antimicrobial
resistance (AMR). AMR genes are often carried on self-transmissible plasmids, which are …

Role of the CagY antenna projection in Helicobacter pylori Cag type IV secretion system activity

SC Tran, MS McClain, TL Cover - Infection and Immunity, 2023 - Am Soc Microbiol
Helicobacter pylori strains containing the cag pathogenicity island (PAI) are associated with
the development of gastric adenocarcinoma and peptic ulcer disease. The cag PAI encodes …

The multifaceted virulence of adherent-invasive Escherichia coli

S Mansour, T Asrar, W Elhenawy - Gut Microbes, 2023 - Taylor & Francis
The surge in inflammatory bowel diseases, like Crohn's disease (CD), is alarming. While the
role of the gut microbiome in CD development is unresolved, the frequent isolation of …

Substrate recruitment mechanism by gram-negative type III, IV, and VI bacterial injectisomes

A Meir, K Macé, Y Vegunta, SM Williams… - Trends in …, 2023 - cell.com
Bacteria use a wide arsenal of macromolecular substrates (DNA and proteins) to interact
with or infect prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells. To do so, they utilize substrate-injecting …