Breidenstein Annika, Svedberg Dennis, Ter Beek Josy, Berntsson Ronnie P-A
Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, Umeå University, SE-90187 Umeå, Sweden; Wallenberg Centre for Molecular Medicine & Umeå Centre for Microbial Research, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden.
Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, Umeå University, SE-90187 Umeå, Sweden; Wallenberg Centre for Molecular Medicine & Umeå Centre for Microbial Research, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden.
J Mol Biol. 2025 Feb 15;437(4):168924. doi: 10.1016/j.jmb.2024.168924. Epub 2024 Dec 31.
Despite recent advances in our understanding of the structure and function of conjugative Type 4 Secretion Systems (T4SSs), there is still only very scarce data available for the ones from Gram-positive (G) bacteria. This is a problem, as conjugative T4SSs are main drivers for the spread of antibiotic resistance genes and virulence factors. Here, we aim to increase our understanding of G systems, by using bioinformatic approaches to identify proteins that are conserved in all conjugative T4SS machineries and reviewing the current knowledge available for these components. We then combine this information with the most recent advances in structure prediction technologies to propose a structural model for a G T4SS from the model system encoded on pCF10. By doing so, we show that conjugative G T4SSs likely have more in common with their Gram-negative counterparts than previously expected, and we highlight the potential of predicted structural models to serve as a starting point for experimental design.
尽管最近我们对接合性IV型分泌系统（T4SSs）的结构和功能有了一些进展，但关于革兰氏阳性（G）细菌的T4SSs的数据仍然非常稀少。这是一个问题，因为接合性T4SSs是抗生素抗性基因和毒力因子传播的主要驱动力。在这里，我们旨在通过生物信息学方法来识别在所有接合性T4SS机制中保守的蛋白质，并回顾这些组件的现有知识，从而增进我们对G系统的理解。然后，我们将这些信息与结构预测技术的最新进展相结合，为pCF10编码的模型系统中的G T4SS提出一个结构模型。通过这样做，我们表明，接合性G T4SSs与其革兰氏阴性对应物可能比以前预期的有更多的共同之处，并且我们强调了预测结构模型作为实验设计起点的潜力。
