Department of Microbiology, Universitat Bayreuth , Bayreuth, Germany.
Aix-Marseille Université, CEA, CNRS, Institute of Biosciences and Biotechnologies of Aix-Marseille , Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France.
mBio. 2023 Oct 31;14(5):e0164923. doi: 10.1128/mbio.01649-23. Epub 2023 Oct 12.
To efficiently navigate within the geomagnetic field, magnetotactic bacteria (MTB) align their magnetosome organelles into chains, which are organized by the actin-like MamK protein. Although MamK is the most highly conserved magnetosome protein common to all MTB, its analysis has been confined to a small subgroup owing to the inaccessibility of most MTB. Our study takes advantage of a genetically tractable host where expression of diverse MamK orthologs together with a resurrected MamK LUCA and uncharacterized actin-like Mad28 proteins from deep-branching MTB resulted in gradual restoration of magnetosome chains in various mutants. Our results further indicate the existence of species-specific MamK interactors and shed light on the evolutionary relationships of one of the key proteins associated with bacterial magnetotaxis.
为了有效地在磁场中导航，趋磁细菌（MTB）将它们的磁小体细胞器排列成链状，由肌动蛋白样 MamK 蛋白进行组织。尽管 MamK 是所有 MTB 中最保守的磁小体蛋白，但由于大多数 MTB 难以接近，其分析仅限于一小部分。我们的研究利用了一种遗传上易于操作的宿主，在该宿主中表达不同的 MamK 同源物，以及来自深分枝 MTB 的复活的 MamK LUCA 和未表征的肌动蛋白样 Mad28 蛋白，导致各种突变体中磁小体链逐渐恢复。我们的结果进一步表明存在物种特异性的 MamK 相互作用体，并阐明了与细菌趋磁性相关的关键蛋白之一的进化关系。
