PAAR proteins act as the ‘sorting hat’ of the type VI secretion system
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Wood, Thomas E
Howard, Sophie A
Wettstadt, Sarah
Filloux, Alain
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Bacteria exist in polymicrobial environments and compete to prevail in a niche. The type VI secretion system (T6SS) is a nanomachine employed by Gram-negative bacteria to deliver effector proteins into target cells. Consequently, T6SS-positive bacteria produce a wealth of antibacterial effector proteins to promote their survival among a prokaryotic community. These toxins are loaded onto the VgrG–PAAR spike and Hcp tube of the T6SS apparatus and recent work has started to document the specificity of effectors for certain spike components. Pseudomonas aeruginosa encodes several PAAR proteins, whose roles have been poorly investigated. Here we describe a phospholipase family antibacterial effector immunity pair from Pseudomonas aeruginosa and demonstrate that a specific PAAR protein is necessary for the delivery of the effector and its cognate VgrG. Furthermore, the PAAR protein appears to restrict the delivery of other phospholipase effectors that utilise distinct VgrG proteins. We provide further evidence for competition for PAAR protein recruitment to the T6SS apparatus, which determines the identities of the delivered effectors.
Date Issued
2019-08-05
Date Acceptance
2019-07-16
Citation
Microbiology, 2019, 165 (11), pp.1203-1218
ISSN
1350-0872
Publisher
Microbiology Society
Start Page
1203
End Page
1218
Journal / Book Title
Microbiology
Volume
165
Issue
11
Copyright Statement
© 2019 The Authors
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the
original work is properly cited.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the
original work is properly cited.
Sponsor
Medical Research Council (MRC)
Medical Research Council (MRC)
Identifier
https://mic.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/micro/10.1099/mic.0.000842
Grant Number
MR/K001930/1
MR/N023250/1
Subjects
PAAR
VgrG
effector
immunity
type VI secretion system
Microbiology
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2019-08-05