Download MendeleyPerturbed N-glycosylation of Halobacterium salinarum archaellum filaments leads to filament bundling and compromised cell motility.
Sofer, S., Vershinin, Z., Mashni, L., Zalk, R., Shahar, A., Eichler, J., Grossman-Haham, I.(2024) Nat Commun 15: 5841-5841
- PubMed: 38992036
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-50277-1
- Primary Citation of Related Structures:
9EQ7, 9ESM, 9ETU - PubMed Abstract:
The swimming device of archaea-the archaellum-presents asparagine (N)-linked glycans. While N-glycosylation serves numerous roles in archaea, including enabling their survival in extreme environments, how this post-translational modification contributes to cell motility remains under-explored. Here, we report the cryo-EM structure of archaellum filaments from the haloarchaeon Halobacterium salinarum, where archaellins, the building blocks of the archaellum, are N-glycosylated, and the N-glycosylation pathway is well-resolved. We further determined structures of archaellum filaments from two N-glycosylation mutant strains that generate truncated glycans and analyzed their motility. While cells from the parent strain exhibited unidirectional motility, the N-glycosylation mutant strain cells swam in ever-changing directions within a limited area. Although these mutant strain cells presented archaellum filaments that were highly similar in architecture to those of the parent strain, N-linked glycan truncation greatly affected interactions between archaellum filaments, leading to dramatic clustering of both isolated and cell-attached filaments. We propose that the N-linked tetrasaccharides decorating archaellins act as physical spacers that minimize the archaellum filament aggregation that limits cell motility.
Organizational Affiliation:
Department of Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel.
