Lipopolysaccharides articles from across Nature Portfolio

Manioglu et al use high-resolution atomic force microscopy to resolve how polymyxins interact with the bacterial membrane. Polymyxins arrange the bacterial lipids into regular hexagonal structures that stiffen the membrane and lead to rupture.

Crystal structures of a five-protein complex comprising the inner-membrane components of the bacterial lipopolysaccharide transporter provide insight into the mechanism of extraction of lipopolysaccharide from the inner membrane and its transport to the outer membrane.

Zhang, Hou, Xu, Srinivas et al. report the mechanism of colistin resistance imparted by MCR-4, which has a distinct catalytic domain but employs a similar ping-pong catalysis mechanism to that used by the well-studied MCR-1. This study provides further insights into the bacterial resistance to colistin, the last-resort antibiotic.

Cryo-electron microscopy snapshots of the E. coli flippase MsbA at discrete functional states reveal a ‘trap and flip’ mechanism for lipopolysaccharide flipping and the conformational transitions of MsbA during its substrate transport cycle.