Infection with the gastric pathogen Helicobacter pylori is a risk factor for the development of gastric cancer. Pathogenic strains of H. pylori carry a type IV secretion system (T4SS) responsible for the injection of the oncoprotein CagA into host cells. H. pylori and its cag-T4SS exploit α5β1 integrin as a receptor for CagA translocation. Injected CagA localizes to the inner leaflet of the hos...

The VirB/D4 type IV secretion system (T4SS) of the bacterial pathogen Bartonella henselae (Bhe) translocates seven effector proteins (BepA-BepG) into human cells that subvert host cellular functions. Two redundant pathways dependent on BepG or the combination of BepC and BepF trigger the formation of a bacterial uptake structure termed the invasome. Invasome formation is a multi-step process co...

Bacteria translocate effector molecules to host cells through highly evolved secretion systems. By definition, the function of these effector proteins is to manipulate host cell biology and the sequence, structural and functional annotations of these effector proteins will provide a better understanding of how bacterial secretion systems promote bacterial survival and virulence. Here we develop...

Mycobacteria have a distinct secretion system, termed type VII (T7SS), which is encoded by paralogous chromosomal loci (ESX) and associated with pathogenesis, conjugation, and metal homeostasis. Evolution of paralogous gene families is of interest because duplication is an important mechanism by which novel genes evolve, but there are potential conflicts between adaptive forces that stabilize d...

These data further highlight the risk of worldwide dissemination of NDM-1. The fact that NDM-1 was detected on a transposon already observed in the Belgian NDM-1-producing A. baumannii, but on a different plasmid (T4SS), harbouring multiple virulence factors, which was easily transferred to E. coli, underlines the potential of A. pittii as a resistance reservoir for the dissemination of NDM-1 t...

We refer to the recent publication by Nakano and co-workers in Disease Models & Mechanisms (Nakano et al., 2016). This report claims that the Helicobacter pylori vacuolating cytotoxin (VacA) is the crucial factor inducing the activation of the host cell kinase for translocated CagA, Src, via a mechanism involving the receptor phosphatase RPTP-α using the human duodenum carcinoma cell line AZ-52...