Protein Dynamics in F-like Bacterial Conjugation

Abstract

Efficient in silico development of novel antibiotics requires high-resolution, dynamic models of drug targets. As conjugation is considered the prominent contributor to the spread of antibiotic resistance genes, targeted drug design to disrupt vital components of conjugative systems has been proposed to lessen the proliferation of bacterial antibiotic resistance. Advancements in structural imaging techniques of large macromolecular complexes has accelerated the discovery of novel protein-protein interactions in bacterial type IV secretion systems (T4SS). The known structural information regarding the F-like T4SS components and complexes has been summarized in the following review, revealing a complex network of protein-protein interactions involving domains with varying degrees of disorder. Structural predictions were performed to provide insight on the dynamicity of proteins within the F plasmid conjugative system that lack structural information.

Keywords

• bacterial conjugation
• type IV secretion system (T4SS)
• F plasmid
• pilus protein structure
• protein dynamics
• protein-protein interactions