Uncharacterized bacterial structures revealed by electron cryotomography
- Creators
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Dobro, Megan J.
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Oikonomou, Catherine M.
- Piper, Aidan
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Cohen, John
- Guo, Kylie
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Jensen, Taylor
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Tadayon, Jahan
- Donermeyer, Joseph
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Park, Yeram
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Solis, Benjamin A.
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Kjær, Andreas
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Jewett, Andrew I.
- McDowall, Alasdair W.
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Chen, Songye
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Chang, Yi-Wei
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Shi, Jian
- Subramanian, Poorna
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Iancu, Cristina V.
- Li, Zhuo
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Briegel, Ariane
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Tocheva, Elitza I.
- Pilhofer, Martin
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Jensen, Grant J.
Abstract
Electron cryotomography (ECT) can reveal the native structure and arrangement of macromolecular complexes inside intact cells. This technique has greatly advanced our understanding of the ultrastructure of bacterial cells. We now view bacteria as structurally complex assemblies of macromolecular machines rather than as undifferentiated bags of enzymes. To date, our group has applied ECT to nearly 90 different bacterial species, collecting more than 15,000 cryotomograms. In addition to known structures, we have observed, to our knowledge, several uncharacterized features in these tomograms. Some are completely novel structures; others expand the features or species range of known structure types. Here, we present a survey of these uncharacterized bacterial structures in the hopes of accelerating their identification and study, and furthering our understanding of the structural complexity of bacterial cells.
Additional Information
© 2017 American Society for Microbiology. Received 10 March 2017; Accepted 27 May 2017; Accepted manuscript posted online 12 June 2017. We thank our collaborators who provided strains for imaging: Andrew Camilli (Streptococcus pneumoniae), Eric Matson (strain JT5), Gladys Alexandre (Azospirillum brasilense mutants), Lotte Søgaard-Andersen, Simon Ringgaard, and Matthew K. Waldor (Vibrio cholerae wild type and mutants), Michael Marletta (Shewanella putrefaciens), and Gordon Cannon and Sabine Heinhorst (Halothiobacillus neapolitanus and Thiomonas intermedia). We also thank members of the Jensen lab for their helpful discussions. M.J.D. and G.J.J. conceived the idea for the study; M.J.D., C.M.O., A.P., J.C., K.G., T.J., J.T., J.D., Y.P., A.K., A.I.J., M.P., S.C., E.I.T., Y.-W.C., A.B., J.S., Z.L., P.S., C.V.I., B.A.S., and A.W.M. performed formal analysis and investigation; M.J.D. and C.M.O. wrote and prepared the original article draft; M.J.D., C.M.O., and G.J.J. wrote, reviewed, and edited the final article draft; M.J.D. and G.J.J. acquired funding; G.J.J. provided resources; and M.J.D. and G.J.J. supervised the study. This work was supported by the Hampshire College Dr. Lucy fund and the Collaborative Modeling Center, NIH grant R01 AI27401 (to G.J.J.), the Beckman Institute at Caltech, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Human Frontier Science Program, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the John Templeton Foundation as part of the Boundaries of Life project. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation. We declare no competing interests.Attached Files
Published - J._Bacteriol.-2017-Dobro-.pdf
Supplemental Material - zjb999094502s1.pdf
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Additional details
- PMCID
- PMC5553035
- Eprint ID
- 78264
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20170616-093425610
- Hampshire College
- R01 AI27401
- NIH
- Caltech Beckman Institute
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- Human Frontier Science Program
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI)
- John Templeton Foundation
- Created
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2017-06-16Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2023-06-01Created from EPrint's last_modified field