Caitlin N Spaulding, Henry Louis Schreiber, Weili Zheng, Karen W Dodson, Jennie E Hazen, Matt S Conover, Fengbin Wang, Pontus Svenmarker, Areli Luna-Rico, Olivera Francetic, Magnus Andersson, Scott Hultgren, Edward H Egelman
Uropathogenic E. coli (UPEC), which cause urinary tract infections (UTI), utilize type 1 pili, a chaperone usher pathway (CUP) pilus, to cause UTI and colonize the gut. The pilus rod, comprised of repeating FimA subunits, provides a structural scaffold for displaying the tip adhesin, FimH. We solved the 4.2 Å resolution structure of the type 1 pilus rod using cryo-electron microscopy. Residues forming the interactive surfaces that determine the mechanical properties of the rod were maintained by selection based on a global alignment of fimA sequences...
January 18, 2018: ELife