Pore-forming toxins

Enhanced SnapShot: Pore-Forming Toxins

Pore-forming toxins induce multiple cellular responses promoting survival.

Pore-forming toxins (PFTs) are secreted proteins that contribute to the virulence of a great variety of bacterial pathogens. They inflict one of the more disastrous damages a target cell can be exposed to: disruption of plasma membrane integrity. Since this is an ancient form of attack, which bears similarities to mechanical membrane damage, cells have evolved response pathways to these perturb...

The Aerolysin-Like Toxin Family of Cytolytic, Pore-Forming Toxins

Pore-forming toxins (PFTs) represent the largest known group of bacterial protein toxins to date. Membrane insertion and subsequent pore-formation occurs after initial binding to cell-surface receptor and oligomerization. Aerolysin, a toxin produced by the Gram-negative bacterium Aeromonas hydrophila and related species, belongs to the PFT group and shares a common mechanism of action involving...

A biomimetic nanosponge that absorbs pore-forming toxins

Detoxification treatments such as toxin-targeted anti-virulence therapy offer ways to cleanse the body of virulence factors that are caused by bacterial infections, venomous injuries and biological weaponry. Because existing detoxification platforms such as antisera, monoclonal antibodies, small-molecule inhibitors and molecularly imprinted polymers act by targeting the molecular structures of ...

Cellular Entry of Binary and Pore-Forming Bacterial Toxins

This Special Issue of Toxins, entitled “Cellular Entry of Binary and Pore-Forming Bacterial Toxins,” gives a sense of the recent advances in characterizing the functional and structural aspects of this broad scientific problem that goes beyond the classical field of toxinology and microbiology and spills into the general areas of biochemistry, biophysics, and molecular and cell biology. The con...