Adhesion pilus retraction powers twitching motility in the thermoacidophilic crenarchaeon Sulfolobus acidocaldarius.

Autor: Charles-Orszag A; Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, US., van Wolferen M; Molecular Biology of Archaea, Faculty of Biology, Institute of Biology II, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany., Lord SJ; Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, US., Albers SV; Molecular Biology of Archaea, Faculty of Biology, Institute of Biology II, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany. sonja.albers@biologie.uni-freiburg.de.; Signalling Research Centre BIOSS and CIBBS, Faculty of Biology, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany. sonja.albers@biologie.uni-freiburg.de., Mullins RD; Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, US. dyche.mullins@ucsf.edu.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Nature communications [Nat Commun] 2024 Jun 14; Vol. 15 (1), pp. 5051. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Jun 14.
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-49101-7
Abstrakt: Type IV pili are filamentous appendages found in most bacteria and archaea, where they can support functions such as surface adhesion, DNA uptake, aggregation, and motility. In most bacteria, PilT-family ATPases disassemble adhesion pili, causing them to rapidly retract and produce twitching motility, important for surface colonization. As archaea do not possess PilT homologs, it was thought that archaeal pili cannot retract and that archaea do not exhibit twitching motility. Here, we use live-cell imaging, automated cell tracking, fluorescence imaging, and genetic manipulation to show that the hyperthermophilic archaeon Sulfolobus acidocaldarius exhibits twitching motility, driven by retractable adhesion (Aap) pili, under physiologically relevant conditions (75 °C, pH 2). Aap pili are thus capable of retraction in the absence of a PilT homolog, suggesting that the ancestral type IV pili in the last universal common ancestor (LUCA) were capable of retraction.
(© 2024. The Author(s).)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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