crANKing up the infection: ankyrin domains in and their role in host manipulation.

Intracellular bacteria use secreted effector proteins to modify host biology and facilitate infection. For many of these microbes, a particular eukaryotic domain-the ankyrin repeat (ANK)-plays a central role in specifying the host proteins and pathways targeted by the microbe. While we understand much of how some ANKs function in model organisms like and , the understudied species harbor many proteins with ANKs, some of which play critical roles during infection. This minireview is meant to organize and summarize the research progress made in understanding some of these ANKs as well as document some of the techniques that have driven much of this progress.