Identification of diverse archaeal proteins with class III signal peptides cleaved by distinct archaeal prepilin peptidases.

Distinct Archaeal Prepilin Peptidases with Class III Signal Peptides Cleaved by Identification of Diverse Archaeal Proteins

Archaeal homolog of bacterial type IV prepilin signal peptidases with broad substrate specificity.

A large number of secretory proteins in the thermoacidophile Sulfolobus solfataricus are synthesized as a precursor with an unusual leader peptide that resembles bacterial type IV prepilin signal sequences. This set of proteins includes the flagellin subunit but also various solute binding proteins. Here we describe the identification of the S. solfataricus homolog of bacterial type IV prepilin...

Different minimal signal peptide lengths recognized by the archaeal prepilin-like peptidases FlaK and PibD.

In Archaea, the preflagellin peptidase (a type IV prepilin-like peptidase designated FlaK in Methanococcus voltae and Methanococcus maripaludis) is the enzyme that cleaves the N-terminal signal peptide from preflagellins. In methanogens and several other archaeal species, the typical flagellin signal peptide length is 11 to 12 amino acids, while in other archaea preflagellins possess extremely ...

Mass spectrometry unmasks mystery Methanococcus pilin.

In this issue, Ng and colleagues describe their outside-in identification of genes involved in the expression of unusual type IV pili in the archaeon Methanococcus maripaludis (13). This intriguing tale, like many in science, hints at chapters not yet written and contains a common theme...expected the unexpected. Prokaryotes, both bacteria and archaea, express a variety of pili, fimbriae, flage...

CRISPR-Cas: the effective immune systems in the prokaryotes

Approximately all sequenced archaeal and half of eubacterial genomes have some sort of adaptive immune system, which enables them to target and cleave invading foreign genetic elements by an RNAi-like pathway. CRISPR–Cas (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats–CRISPR-associated proteins) systems consist of the CRISPR loci with multiple copies of a short repeat sequence separa...