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Cellular microbiology

Bacterial pea shooters

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 9, page 562 (2011)Cite this article

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a bacterial surface structure that may enable long-distance delivery of outer membrane vesicles

The authors studied cultures of a soil betaproteobacterium from the family Comamonadaceae, Delftia sp. Cs1-4, by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and electron cryotomography, and found tubular structures (>6 μm long) that projected from the cell surfaces. These structures, which the authors call nanopods, are crystalline-like tubes that enclose chains of vesicle-like structures and are contiguous with the proteinaceous surface layer (S layer) covering the cells. Mass spectrometry of nanopods revealed a high abundance of a protein of unknown function (designated nanopod protein A (NpdA)), together with various putative outer membrane proteins, periplasmic enzymes and secreted proteins. The nanopod vesicles were found to contain lipopolysaccharide, further supporting the idea that they are bona fide outer membrane vesicles.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

  1. Shetty, A. et al. Nanopods: a new bacterial structure and mechanism for deployment of outer membrane vesicles. PLoS ONE 6, e20725 (2011)

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  1. Cesar Sanchez
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Sanchez, C. Bacterial pea shooters. Nat Rev Microbiol 9, 562 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro2618

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