What's the point of the type III secretion system needle?
- Ariel J. Blocker*,
- Janet E. Deane†,
- Andreas K. J. Veenendaal†,
- Pietro Roversi†,
- Julie L. Hodgkinson†,
- Steven Johnson†, and
- Susan M. Lea†,‡
- *Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, School of Medical Sciences, University of Bristol, University Walk, Bristol BS8 1TD, United Kingdom; and
- †Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3RE, United Kingdom
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Edited by Brian J. Staskawicz, University of California, Berkeley, CA, and approved March 19, 2008 (received for review September 20, 2007)
Abstract
Recent work by several groups has significantly expanded our knowledge of the structure, regulation of assembly, and function of components of the extracellular portion of the type III secretion system (T3SS) of Gram-negative bacteria. This perspective presents a structure-informed analysis of functional data and discusses three nonmutually exclusive models of how a key aspect of T3SS biology, the sensing of host cells, may be performed.
Footnotes
- ‡To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: susan.lea{at}path.ox.ac.uk
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Author contributions: A.J.B., J.E.D., A.K.J.V., P.R., J.L.H., S.J., and S.M.L. designed research; A.J.B., J.E.D., A.K.J.V., P.R., J.L.H., S.J., and S.M.L. performed research; A.J.B., J.E.D., A.K.J.V., P.R., J.L.H., S.J., and S.M.L. analyzed data; and A.J.B., J.E.D., S.J., and S.M.L. wrote the paper.
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The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
- © 2008 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA
