Architecture and Self-Assembly of Clostridium sporogenes and Clostridium botulinum Spore Surfaces Illustrate a General Protective Strategy across Spore Formers.

ABSTRACT: Spores, the infectious agents of many Firmicutes, are remarkably resilient cell forms. Even distant relatives can have similar spore architectures although some display unique features; they all incorporate protective proteinaceous envelopes. We previously found that Bacillus spores can achieve these protective properties through extensive disulfide cross-linking of self-assembled arrays of cysteine-rich proteins. We predicted that this could be a mechanism employed by spore formers in general, even those from other genera. Here, we tested this by revealing in nanometer detail how the outer envelope (exosporium) in Clostridium sporogenes (surrogate for C. botulinum group I), and in other clostridial relatives, forms a hexagonally symmetric semipermeable array. A

SUBMITTER: Janganan TK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7333573 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature