Anchoring of bacterial effectors to host membranes through host-mediated lipidation by prenylation: a common paradigm

• Autores: Tasneem Al Quadan, Christopher T. Price, Nir London, Ora Schueler Furman, Yousef Abu Kwaik
• Localización: Trends in microbiology, ISSN 0966-842X, Vol. 19, Nº. 12, 2011, págs. 573-579
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Post-translational lipidation by prenylation of the CaaX-box C-terminal motif in eukaryotic proteins facilitates anchoring of hydrophilic proteins, such as Ras and Rab, to membranes. A large cadre of bacterial effectors injected into host cells is anchored to host membranes by unknown mechanisms. As already documented for Legionella and Salmonella, we propose a common paradigm of microbial exploitation of the host prenylation machinery for anchoring of injected effectors to host membranes. This is supported by numerous potential microbial CaaX-box-containing proteins identified using refined bioinformatic tools. We also propose utilization of the CaaX motif as a membrane-targeting tag for proteins expressed in eukaryotic cells to facilitate deciphering of biological function.