Sunday 25 August 2013

Molecular assembly of the aerolysin pore

A new research paper of interest, titled "Molecular assembly of the aerolysin pore reveals a swirling membrane-insertion mechanism."

Aerolysin is a cytolytic pore-forming toxin exported by Aeromonas hydrophila, a Gram-negative bacterium associated with diarrhoeal diseases and deep wound infections. The mature toxin binds to eukaryotic cells and aggregates to form holes (approximately 3 nm in diameter) leading to the destruction of the membrane permeability barrier and osmotic lysis.

Published in Nature Chemical Biology, this discovery offers an insight into the fight against pathogens that are increasingly resistant to antibiotics. The abstract reads:

"Aerolysin is the founding member of a superfamily of β-pore–forming toxins whose pore structure is unknown. We have combined X-ray crystallography, cryo-EM, molecular dynamics and computational modeling to determine the structures of aerolysin mutants in their monomeric and heptameric forms, trapped at various stages of the pore formation process. A dynamic modeling approach based on swarm intelligence was applied, whereby the intrinsic flexibility of aerolysin extracted from new X-ray structures was used to fully exploit the cryo-EM spatial restraints. Using this integrated strategy, we obtained a radically new arrangement of the prepore conformation and a near-atomistic structure of the aerolysin pore, which is fully consistent with all of the biochemical data available so far. Upon transition from the prepore to pore, the aerolysin heptamer shows a unique concerted swirling movement, accompanied by a vertical collapse of the complex, ultimately leading to the insertion of a transmembrane β-barrel."

Posted by Tim Sandle

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