scholarly journals Single Molecule Localization Microscopy (SMLM) imaging of bacteria: A sample preparation guide

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sachith D. Gunasinghe ◽  
Kirstin D. Elgass ◽  
Toby D. M. Bell ◽  
Trevor Lithgow

Abstract In recent years Super-resolution microscopy has become an invaluable tool to noninvasively interrogate the membrane architecture of bacteria to study the spatial organization of proteins associated with membranes, which in turn help us to understand how bacteria have evolved to exploit environmental niches. Model systems like Escherichia coli and Caulobacter cresentus have been used to study the spatiotemporal organization of membrane proteins. Like most gram-negative bacteria, the outer membrane of E.coli is populated with β-barrel proteins, which serve as selective channels where exchange of small molecules take place. Surface exposed domains in these channels provide means to fluorescently label and utilise them for fluorescent microscopy studies to investigate their spatial organization at the outer membrane. Here, we describe a methodology to fluorescently label outer membrane proteins in E.coli and study their spatial organization using direct stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (dSTORM).

2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rajeev Misra

In the last decade, there has been an explosion of publications on the assembly of β-barrel outer membrane proteins (OMPs), which carry out diverse cellular functions, including solute transport, protein secretion, and assembly of protein and lipid components of the outer membrane. Of the three outer membrane model systems—Gram-negative bacteria, mitochondria and chloroplasts—research on bacterial and mitochondrial systems has so far led the way in dissecting the β-barrel OMP assembly pathways. Many exciting discoveries have been made, including the identification of β-barrel OMP assembly machineries in bacteria and mitochondria, and potentially the core assembly component in chloroplasts. The atomic structures of all five components of the bacterial β-barrel assembly machinery (BAM) complex, except the β-barrel domain of the core BamA protein, have been solved. Structures reveal that these proteins contain domains/motifs known to facilitate protein-protein interactions, which are at the heart of the assembly pathways. While structural information has been valuable, most of our current understanding of the β-barrel OMP assembly pathways has come from genetic, molecular biology, and biochemical analyses. This paper provides a comparative account of the β-barrel OMP assembly pathways in Gram-negative bacteria, mitochondria, and chloroplasts.


2020 ◽  
Vol 477 (16) ◽  
pp. 2949-2965
Author(s):  
Chen Yang ◽  
Sijia Peng ◽  
Chunlai Chen ◽  
Xin Sheng Zhao

The biogenesis of outer membrane proteins (OMPs) is an extremely challenging process. In the periplasm of Escherichia coli, a group of quality control factors work together to exercise the safe-guard and quality control of OMPs. DegP, Skp and SurA are the three most prominent ones. Although extensive investigations have been carried out, the molecular mechanism regarding the networking among these proteins remains mostly mysterious. Our group has previously studied the molecular interactions of OMPs with SurA and Skp, using single-molecule detection (SMD). In this work, again using SMD, we studied how OmpC, a representative of OMPs, interacts with DegP, Skp and SurA collectively. Several important discoveries were made. The self-oligomerization of DegP to form hexamer occurs over hundred micromolars. When OmpC is in a monomer state at a low concentration, the OmpC·DegP6 and OmpC·DegP24 complexes form when the DegP concentration is around sub-micromolars and a hundred micromolars, respectively. High OmpC concentration promotes the binding affinity of DegP to OmpC by ∼100 folds. Skp and SurA behave differently when they interact synergistically with DegP in the presence of substrate. DegP can degrade SurA-protected OmpC, but Skp-protected OmpC forms the ternary complex OmpC·(Skp3)n·DegP6 (n = 1,2) to resist the DegP-mediated degradation. Combined with previous results, we were able to depict a comprehensive picture regarding the molecular mechanism of the networking among DegP, Skp and SurA in the periplasm for the OMPs biogenesis under physiological and stressed conditions.


2011 ◽  
Vol 438 (3) ◽  
pp. 505-511 ◽  
Author(s):  
Si Wu ◽  
Xi Ge ◽  
Zhixin Lv ◽  
Zeyong Zhi ◽  
Zengyi Chang ◽  
...  

The OMPs (outer membrane proteins) of Gram-negative bacteria have to be translocated through the periplasmic space before reaching their final destination. The aqueous environment of the periplasmic space and high permeability of the outer membrane engender such a translocation process inevitably challenging. In Escherichia coli, although SurA, Skp and DegP have been identified to function in translocating OMPs across the periplasm, their precise roles and their relationship remain to be elucidated. In the present paper, by using fluorescence resonance energy transfer and single-molecule detection, we have studied the interaction between the OMP OmpC and these periplasmic quality control factors. The results of the present study reveal that the binding rate of OmpC to SurA or Skp is much faster than that to DegP, which may lead to sequential interaction between OMPs and different quality control factors. Such a kinetic partitioning mechanism for the chaperone–substrate interaction may be essential for the quality control of the biogenesis of OMPs


Genes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 451
Author(s):  
Pablo Mier ◽  
Miguel A. Andrade-Navarro

Low complexity regions (LCRs) in proteins are characterized by amino acid frequencies that differ from the average. These regions evolve faster and tend to be less conserved between homologs than globular domains. They are not common in bacteria, as compared to their prevalence in eukaryotes. Studying their conservation could help provide hypotheses about their function. To obtain the appropriate evolutionary focus for this rapidly evolving feature, here we study the conservation of LCRs in bacterial strains and compare their high variability to the closeness of the strains. For this, we selected 20 taxonomically diverse bacterial species and obtained the completely sequenced proteomes of two strains per species. We calculated all orthologous pairs for each of the 20 strain pairs. Per orthologous pair, we computed the conservation of two types of LCRs: compositionally biased regions (CBRs) and homorepeats (polyX). Our results show that, in bacteria, Q-rich CBRs are the most conserved, while A-rich CBRs and polyA are the most variable. LCRs have generally higher conservation when comparing pathogenic strains. However, this result depends on protein subcellular location: LCRs accumulate in extracellular and outer membrane proteins, with conservation increased in the extracellular proteins of pathogens, and decreased for polyX in the outer membrane proteins of pathogens. We conclude that these dependencies support the functional importance of LCRs in host–pathogen interactions.


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