Recent insights into iron import by bacteria
Abstract
Bacteria are confronted with a low availability of iron owing to its insolubility in the Fe3+ form or its being bound to host proteins. The bacteria cope with the iron deficiency by using host heme or siderophores synthesized by themselves or other microbes. In contrast to most other nutrients, iron compounds are tightly bound to proteins at the cell surfaces, from which they are further translocated by highly specific proteins across the cell wall of gram-positive bacteria and the outer membrane of gram-negative bacteria. Once heme and iron siderophores arrive at the cytoplasmic membrane, they are taken up across the cytoplasmic membrane by ABC transporters. Here we present an outline of bacterial heme and iron siderophore transport exemplified by a few selected cases in which recent progress in the understanding of the transport mechanisms has been achieved.
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These proteins work in concert to shuttle iron from the cell surface to the cytoplasm.
“These proteins work in concert to shuttle iron from the cell surface to the cytoplasm (Braun and Hantke, 2011;Krewulak and Vogel, 2011).”
From Iron in infection and immunity (2020) · cites this paper as Braun and Hantke, 2011
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- Authors
- Braun, V., & Hantke, K.
- Affiliations
- Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology (DE)
- University of Tübingen (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Braun, Volkmar
- Venue
- Current Opinion in Chemical Biology
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2011-04
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 328-334
- ISSN
- 1367-5931 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2080927615
- Cited by
- 264
- References
- 33
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 19 · 2022: 18 · 2021: 14 · 2020: 18 · 2019: 15 · 2018: 14 · 2017: 16 · 2016: 19 · 2015: 27 · 2014: 19 · 2013: 17 · 2012: 31
- FWCI
- 2.48
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Current Opinion in Chemical Biology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Bacterial Genetics and Biotechnology
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Hematology › Iron Metabolism and Disorders
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Oncology › Drug Transport and Resistance Mechanisms
- Keywords
- bacterial iron acquisition, iron imports, siderophores, heme uptake, ABC transporters, outer membrane transporters, iron deficiency, Gram-positive bacteria, Gram-negative bacteria
- MeSH terms
- Bacteria, Bacterial Proteins, Biological Transport, Heme, Iron, Models, Molecular, Siderophores, ATP-Binding Cassette Transporters
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