Journal
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF MICROBIOLOGY
Volume 60, Issue 11, Pages 697-716Publisher
CANADIAN SCIENCE PUBLISHING
DOI: 10.1139/cjm-2014-0595
Keywords
Wzx flippase; Wzy polymerase; Wzz polysaccharide copolymerase; lipopolysaccharide (LPS); membrane proteins
Categories
Funding
- Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarship
- Michael Smith Foreign Study supplement from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)
- Cystic Fibrosis Canada (CFC)
- CIHR [MOP-14687]
- University of Guelph Vice President Academic Research Fund
- CFC
- Aix-Marseille University A*MIDEX program
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The surfaces of bacteria mediate a multitude of functions in the environment and in an infected host, including adhesion to both biotic and abiotic substrata, motility, immune system interaction and (or) activation, biofilm formation, and cell-cell communication, with many of these features directly influenced by cell-surface glycans. In both Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria, the majority of cell-surface polysaccharides are produced via the Wzx/Wzy-dependent assembly pathway; these glycans include heteropolymeric O-antigen, enterobacterial common antigen, exopolysaccharide, spore coat, and capsule in diverse bacteria. The key components of this assembly pathway are the integral inner membrane Wzx flippase, Wzy polymerase, and Wzz chain-length regulator proteins, which until recently have resisted detailed structural and functional characterization. In this review, we have provided a comprehensive synthesis of the latest structural and mechanistic data for each protein, as well as an examination of substrate specificity for each assembly step and complex formation between the constituent proteins. To complement the unprecedented explosion of genomic-sequencing data for bacteria, we have also highlighted both classical and state-of-the-art methods by which encoded Wzx, Wzy, and Wzz proteins can be reliably identified and annotated, using the model Gram-negative bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa as an example data set. Lastly, we outline future avenues of research, with the aim of stimulating researchers to take the next steps in investigating the function of, and interplay between, the constituents of this widespread assembly scheme.
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