Type IV pili are long polymers located on the surface of a wide variety of bacterial cells, including the pathogenNeisseria meningitidis. They are responsible for a diverse range of functions, including adhesion, motility and natural transformation. In this issue of The EMBO Journal, Imhaus and Duménil show that two minor pilins, PilX and PilV, exert some of their effects by changing mean surfa...

Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) strains produce a type IV pilus named Longus. We identified a 16-gene cluster involved in the biosynthesis of Longus that has 57 to 95% identity at the protein level to CFA/III, another type IV pilus of ETEC. Alleles of the Longus structural subunit gene lngA demonstrate a diversity of 12 to 19% at the protein level with strong positive selection for poin...

A naturally occurring R factor with constitutive pilus synthesis is described which resembles the sex factor F in compatibility and in restricting coliphage T7. Unlike F, it is not cured during growth with acridine orange. Results suggest that the R factor produces repressor of pilus synthesis, to which the operator is insensitive (i(+)o(c)). In this respect it differs from both the F factor (i...

UNLABELLED Though the bacterial opportunist Enterococcus faecalis causes a myriad of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs), including catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs), little is known about the virulence mechanisms that it employs. However, the endocarditis- and biofilm-associated pilus (Ebp), a member of the sortase-assembled pilus family, was shown to play a role in a mouse...

Type IV pili are long polymers located on the surface of a wide variety of bacterial cells, including the pathogenNeisseria meningitidis. They are responsible for a diverse range of functions, including adhesion, motility and natural transformation. In this issue of The EMBO Journal, Imhaus and Duménil show that two minor pilins, PilX and PilV, exert some of their effects by changing mean surfa...

Filamentous bacteriophages infecting gram-negative bacteria display tropism for a variety of pilus structures. However, the obligatory coreceptor of phage infection, postulated from genetic studies, has remained elusive. Here we identify the C-terminal domain of the periplasmic protein TolA as the coreceptor for infection of Escherichia coli by phage fd and the N-terminal domain of the phage mi...

Spontaneous mutants of Neisseria gonorrheae failing to express pili or having diminished levels of piliation were studied with regard to pilin expression. All mutants displayed altered pilin processing detectable as the release of soluble, truncated pilin molecules (S-pilin). Of particular interest was the finding, in one mutant, that substitution of serine for glycine at position -1 of propili...

Neisseria meningitidis use Type IV pili (T4P) to adhere to endothelial cells and breach the blood brain barrier, causing cause fatal meningitis. T4P are multifunctional polymers of the major pilin protein, which share a conserved hydrophobic N terminus that is a curved extended α-helix, α1, in X-ray crystal structures. Here we report a 1.44 Å crystal structure of the N. meningitidis major pilin...