CryoEM reveals the structure of an archaeal pilus involved in twitching motility
Open accessPublished version of a preprint
Abstract
Amongst the major types of archaeal filaments, several have been shown to closely resemble bacterial homologues of the Type IV pili (T4P). Within Sulfolobales , member species encode for three types of T4P, namely the archaellum, the UV-inducible pilus system (Ups) and the archaeal adhesive pilus (Aap). Whereas the archaellum functions primarily in swimming motility, and the Ups in UV-induced cell aggregation and DNA-exchange, the Aap plays an important role in adhesion and twitching motility. Here, we present a cryoEM structure of the Aap of the archaeal model organism Sulfolobus acidocaldarius . We identify the component subunit as AapB and find that while its structure follows the canonical T4P blueprint, it adopts three distinct conformations within the pilus. The tri-conformer Aap structure that we describe challenges our current understanding of pilus structure and sheds new light on the principles of twitching motility.
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Cites
Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold
Jumper, J., Evans, R., Pritzel, A., Green, T., Figurnov, M., Ronneberger, O., Tunyasuvunakool, K., Bates, R., Žídek, A., Potapenko, A., et al. (2021) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2 · Cited by 43,764 · see citing works
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New components of the community-based DNA-repair mechanism in Sulfolobales
Recalde, A., Wagner, A., Sivabalasarma, S., Yurmashava, A., Fehr, N. P., Thurm, R., Le, T. N., Köebler, C., Wassmer, B., Albers, S.-V., et al. (2025) · microLife · doi:10.1093/femsml/uqaf002 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
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- Authors
- Gaines, M. C., Sivabalasarma, S., Isupov, M. N., Haque, R. U., McLaren, M., Hanus, C., Gold, V. A. M., Albers, S.-V., & Daum, B.
- Affiliations
- University of Exeter (GB)
- University of Freiburg (DE)
- Inserm (FR)
- Corresponding author
- Daum, Bertram
- ORCID
- Venue
- Nature Communications
- Published
- 2024-06-14
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 5050-5050
- ISSN
- 2041-1723 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC11178815
- OpenAlex
- W4399679610
- Cited by
- 20
- References
- 3
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 7
- FWCI
- 2.69
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Nature Communications (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion)
- Research Square (acceptedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- FreiDok plus (Universitätsbibliothek Freiburg) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- EC | Horizon 2020 Framework Programme (803894)
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (403222702—SFB 1381, CIBSS – EXC-2189 – Project ID 390939984)
- RCUK | Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/R008639/1)
- Agence Nationale de la Recherche (#ANR-16-CE16-0009-01, #ANR-21-CE16-0021-01)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Biochemical and Structural Characterization
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Structural Biology › Advanced Electron Microscopy Techniques and Applications
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Bacterial Genetics and Biotechnology
- Keywords
- twitching motility, type IV pili, Sulfolobus acidocaldarius, archaeal motility
- MeSH terms
- Models, Molecular, Fimbriae, Bacterial, Sulfolobus acidocaldarius, Archaeal Proteins, Cryoelectron Microscopy, Fimbriae Proteins
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