CryoEM of bacterial secretion systems.

Kooger R; Szwedziak P; Böck D; Pilhofer M

doi:10.1016/j.sbi.2018.08.007

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Journal article

CryoEM of bacterial secretion systems.

Kooger R Institute of Molecular Biology & Biophysics, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland.
Szwedziak P Institute of Molecular Biology & Biophysics, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland.
Böck D Institute of Molecular Biology & Biophysics, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland.
Pilhofer M Institute of Molecular Biology & Biophysics, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland. Electronic address: pilhofer@biol.ethz.ch.

2018-09-18

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Current opinion in structural biology. - 2018

English The need for bacteria to interact with their environment has driven the evolution of elaborate secretion systems. By virtue of their function, secretion systems are macromolecular complexes associated with the cell envelope and therefore inherently difficult to study by conventional structural biology techniques. Cryo-electron microscopy (cryoEM) has become an invaluable technique to study large membrane-embedded complexes and led to major advances in the mechanistic understanding of secretion systems. CryoEM comprises of two main modalities, namely single particle analysis and tomography. Here, we review how detailed structures retrieved by single particle analysis combine elegantly with tomography experiments in which the secretion systems are observed in their native cellular context.

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