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Staying afloat: the structure of gas vesicles

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology volume 30, page 412 (2023)Cite this article

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Reporting in Cell, Huber et al.1 describe the molecular structure of gas vesicles in atomic detail. The authors reconstituted gas vesicles in vitro using recombinantly produced GvpA protein from Bacillus megaterium for imaging by cryo-electron microscopy. They observed that the protein forms cylinders with conical tips, up to 1 μm long and with varying diameters.

By 3D reconstruction, the authors obtained a model of the cylindrical shell, which was composed of thousands of GvpA monomers polymerized side by side into ribs that spiral into a left-handed helix, with 92.93 monomer units per turn. In addition, they showed that GvpA adopts a coil-α-β-β-α-coil fold with a flexible C terminus, with the central β-hairpin forming the core of the rib, helix α2 folded back on it, and helix α1 bridging adjacent ribs. The shell is one to two polypeptide layers thick, supported by hydrogen bonds and salt bridges, and the inside of a gas vesicle is hydrophobic and repels water. Huber et al.1 found that pores in the vesicle shell, large enough to enable diffusion of atmospheric gases, are formed by slits between adjacent α1 helices. Starting from the top of either gas vesicle, the β-turns of GvpA monomers always faced towards the centre of the gas vesicle — towards a ‘seam’, where two helical halves of the shell meet. The authors described a polarity reversal point, formed by two monomers in inverted orientation.

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References

  1. Huber, S. T. et al. Cell 186, 975–986.e13 (2023).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  2. Dutka, P. et al. Preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.06.21.496981 (2022).

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  1. Nature Structural & Molecular Biology https://www.nature.com/nsmb/

    Katarzyna Ciazynska

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  1. Katarzyna Ciazynska
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Correspondence to Katarzyna Ciazynska.

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Ciazynska, K. Staying afloat: the structure of gas vesicles. Nat Struct Mol Biol 30, 412 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41594-023-00978-w

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