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Reconfiguration of a bacterial transport system generates a reverse gear

Some bacteria use multiprotein complexes to inject proteins into host cells. Components of these complexes have been linked to a nanotube-mediated route from host cells to bacteria that might provide food for disease-causing microbes.
  1. Jorge E. Galán

    1. Jorge E. Galán is in the Department of Microbial Pathogenesis, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut 06536, USA.

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Among the most exciting developments of the past two decades of studies of the mechanisms by which bacteria cause disease was the discovery that many such microorganisms have the capacity to transfer bacterially encoded proteins directly into the cells that they infect1. The transferred proteins are known as effectors, and they fulfil diverse roles in modulating cellular processes to promote bacterial infection. This remarkable feat of transfer is achieved by protein complexes that form injection machines. One of the most widespread injection machines is the type III secretion system (T3SS), which functions in many disease-causing bacteria2. Writing in Cell, Pal et al.3 report the intriguing finding that a subset of the components that make up the T3SS in a disease-causing strain of the bacterium Escherichia coli are repurposed to aid the generation of a nanotube-like structure on the bacterial cell surface that might be involved in transporting molecules in the opposite direction: from host cell to bacterium.

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Nature 569, 44-45 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-01320-5

References

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