Publication Date:
2004-06-05
Description:
The mechanisms by which hydrophobic molecules, such as long-chain fatty acids, enter cells are poorly understood. In Gram-negative bacteria, the lipopolysaccharide layer in the outer membrane is an efficient barrier for fatty acids and aromatic hydrocarbons destined for biodegradation. We report crystal structures of the long-chain fatty acid transporter FadL from Escherichia coli at 2.6 and 2.8 angstrom resolution. FadL forms a 14-stranded beta barrel that is occluded by a central hatch domain. The structures suggest that hydrophobic compounds bind to multiple sites in FadL and use a transport mechanism that involves spontaneous conformational changes in the hatch.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉van den Berg, Bert -- Black, Paul N -- Clemons, William M Jr -- Rapoport, Tom A -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2004 Jun 4;304(5676):1506-9.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Cell Biology, Harvard Medical School, 240 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA. lvandenberg@hms.harvard.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15178802" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Amino Acid Sequence
;
Bacterial Outer Membrane Proteins/*chemistry/metabolism
;
Binding Sites
;
Biological Transport
;
Crystallization
;
Crystallography, X-Ray
;
Escherichia coli/chemistry/metabolism
;
Escherichia coli Proteins/*chemistry/metabolism
;
Fatty Acid Transport Proteins
;
Fatty Acids/*metabolism
;
Hydrogen Bonding
;
Hydrophobic and Hydrophilic Interactions
;
Models, Biological
;
Models, Molecular
;
Molecular Sequence Data
;
Protein Conformation
;
Protein Structure, Secondary
;
Protein Structure, Tertiary
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
