The Rivet Model for Channel Formation by Aerolysin-like Pore-Forming Toxins

Iacovache, Mircea Ioan; Paumard, Patrick; Scheib, Holger; Lesieur, Claire; Sakai, Naomi; Matile, Stefan; Parker, Michael W.; Van der Goot, F. Gisou

doi:10.1038/sj.emboj.7600959

Scientific article

English

The Rivet Model for Channel Formation by Aerolysin-like Pore-Forming Toxins

Contributors

Iacovache, Mircea Ioan; Paumard, Patrick; Scheib, Holger; Lesieur, Claire; Sakai, Naomi

; Matile, Stefan

; Parker, Michael W.; Van der Goot, F. Gisou

Published in

EMBO journal, vol. 25, no. 3, p. 457-466

Publication date

2006

Abstract

The bacterial toxin aerolysin kills cells by forming heptameric channels, of unknown structure, in the plasma membrane. Using disulfide trapping and cysteine scanning mutagenesis coupled to thiol-specific labeling on lipid bilayers, we identify a loop that lines the channel. This loop has an alternating pattern of charged and uncharged residues, suggesting that the transmembrane region has a beta-barrel configuration, as observed for Staphylococcal alpha-toxin. Surprisingly, we found that the turn of the beta-hairpin is composed of a stretch of five hydrophobic residues. We show that this hydrophobic turn drives membrane insertion of the developing channel and propose that, once the lipid bilayer has been crossed, it folds back parallel to the plane of the membrane in a rivet-like fashion. This rivet-like conformation was modeled and sequence alignments suggest that such channel riveting may operate for many other pore-forming toxins.

Keywords

ß-barrel
Lipid bilayers
Membrane proteins
Pore-forming
Toxin

UNIGE affiliation entities

Faculté des sciences / Section de chimie et biochimie / Département de chimie organique

Citation (ISO format)

IACOVACHE, Mircea Ioan et al. The Rivet Model for Channel Formation by Aerolysin-like Pore-Forming Toxins. In: EMBO journal, 2006, vol. 25, n° 3, p. 457–466. doi: 10.1038/sj.emboj.7600959

Article

Identifiers

PID : unige:7743
DOI : 10.1038/sj.emboj.7600959
PMID : 16424900

Journal ISSN

0261-4189

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21/06/2010 10:27:28

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14/10/2025 06:56:41

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16/02/2026 06:55:57

The Rivet Model for Channel Formation by Aerolysin-like Pore-Forming Toxins

Contributors

Published in

Publication date

Abstract

Keywords

UNIGE affiliation entities

Citation (ISO format)

Main files (1)

Identifiers

Journal ISSN

Technical informations

Creation

First validation

Update

Status update

Last indexation