Department of Biological Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2012;7(3):e34052. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0034052. Epub 2012 Mar 28.
The mycobacterial cell wall presents significant challenges to mycobacteriophages--viruses that infect mycobacterial hosts--because of its unusual structure containing a mycolic acid-rich mycobacterial outer membrane attached to an arabinogalactan layer that is in turn linked to the peptidoglycan. Although little is known about how mycobacteriophages circumvent these barriers during the process of infection, destroying it for lysis at the end of their lytic cycles requires an unusual set of functions. These include Lysin B proteins that cleave the linkage of mycolic acids to the arabinogalactan layer, chaperones required for endolysin delivery to peptidoglycan, holins that regulate lysis timing, and the endolysins (Lysin As) that hydrolyze peptidoglycan. Because mycobacterial peptidoglycan contains atypical features including 3→3 interpeptide linkages, it is not surprising that the mycobacteriophage endolysins also have non-canonical features. We present here a bioinformatic dissection of these lysins and show that they are highly diverse and extensively modular, with an impressive number of domain organizations. Most contain three domains with a novel N-terminal predicted peptidase, a centrally located amidase, muramidase, or transglycosylase, and a C-terminal putative cell wall binding domain.
分枝杆菌细胞壁的结构非常特殊,其中含有丰富的分枝菌酸的分枝杆菌外膜与阿拉伯半乳聚糖层相连,而阿拉伯半乳聚糖层又与肽聚糖相连,这给感染分枝杆菌的噬菌体(即病毒)带来了巨大的挑战。尽管人们对噬菌体在感染过程中如何绕过这些障碍知之甚少,但要在裂解周期结束时破坏细胞壁进行裂解,就需要一组不寻常的功能。这些功能包括裂解素 B 蛋白,该蛋白可裂解分枝菌酸与阿拉伯半乳聚糖层的连接;将内溶素递送至肽聚糖所需的伴侣蛋白;调节裂解时间的溶菌素;以及水解肽聚糖的内溶素(裂解素 A)。由于分枝杆菌肽聚糖含有非典型特征,包括 3→3 肽间键,因此毫不奇怪,分枝杆菌噬菌体的内溶素也具有非典型特征。我们在这里对这些内溶素进行了生物信息学剖析,结果表明它们具有高度的多样性和广泛的模块性,具有令人印象深刻的结构域组织数量。大多数内溶素包含三个结构域,分别是具有新颖 N 端预测肽酶、位于中心的酰胺酶、内肽酶或转糖基酶,以及 C 端假定的细胞壁结合结构域。