3Outer membrane proteins (OMPs) play important roles in Gram-negative bacteria, mitochondria and chloroplasts in nutrition transport, protein import, secretion, and other fundamental biological processes [1][2][3] . Dysfunction of mitochondria outer membrane proteins are linked to disorders such as diabetes, Parkinsons and other neurodegenerative diseases 4,5 . The OMPs are inserted and folded correctly into the outer membrane (OM) by the conserved OMP85 family proteins [6][7][8] , suggesting that similar insertion mechanisms may be used in Gram-negative bacteria, mitochondria and chloroplasts.In Gram-negative bacteria, OMPs are synthesized in the cytoplasm, and are transported across the inner membrane by SecYEG into the periplasm 8,9 . The seventeen kilodalton (kDa) protein (Skp) and the survival factor A (SurA) chaperones escort the unfolded OMPs across the periplasm to the β-barrel assembly machinery (BAM), which is responsible for insertion and assembly of OMPs into the OM 10-12 . InEscherichia coli, the BAM complex consists of BamA and four lipoprotein subunits, BamB, BamC, BamD and BamE. BamA is comprised of five N-terminal polypeptide transport-associated (POTRA) domains and a C-terminal OMP transmembrane barrel, while the four lipoproteins are affixed to the membrane by N-terminal lipid-modified cysteines. Of these subunits, BamA and BamD are essential 3,6 . One copy of each of these five proteins is required to form the BAM complex with an approximate molecular weight of 200 kDa (Extended Data Fig. 1). In vitro reconstitution of the E.coli BAM complex and functional assays showed that all five subunits are required to obtain the maximum activity of BAM [13][14][15][16] . Furthermore, comparison of the two complexes reveals that the periplasmic units are rotated with respect to the barrel, which appears to be linked to significant conformational changes in the β-strands β1C-β6C of the barrel. Taken together this suggests a novel insertion mechanism whereby rotation of the BAM periplasmic ring promotes insertion of OMPs into the OM. To our knowledge, this is the first reported crystal structure of an intramembrane barrel with a lateral-open conformation.Unique architecture of two E. coli BAM complexes X-ray diffraction data of selenomethionine labelled crystals were collected to 3.9Ångström (Å) resolution and the BAM structure was determined by singlewavelength anomalous dispersion (SAD) and manual molecular replacement (Methods, Extended Data Table 1). The first structure contained four proteins: BamA, BamC, BamD and BamE (Fig. 1a-c), with the electron density and crystal packing indicating that the BamB is absent in the complex. This was confirmed by SDS-PAGE analysis of the crystals (Extended Data Fig. 1 and Supplementary Data Fig. S1). In this model, BamA, BamC, BamD and BamE contain residues E22-I806, C25-K344, E26-S243, and C20-E110, respectively. The machinery is approximately 115 Å in length, 84 Å in width and 132 Å in height (Fig. 1a). 5The architecture of BamACDE resembles a top hat with a...

The outer membrane (OM) of Gram-negative bacteria is a unique asymmetric lipid bilayer in which the outer leaflet is composed of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and the inner leaflet is formed by glycerophospholipid (GPL). The OM plays a fundamental role in protecting Gram-negative bacteria from harsh environments and toxic compounds. The transport and assembly pathways for phospholipids of bacterial OM are unknown. Cardiolipin (CL) plays an important role in OM biogenesis and pathogenesis, and the inner membrane (IM) protein PbgA, containing five transmembrane domains and a globular domain in periplasm has been recently identified as a CL transporter from the IM to the OM with an unknown mechanism. Here we present the first two crystal structures of soluble periplasmic globular domain of PbgA from S. typhimurium and E. coli, which revealed that the globular domains of PbgA resemble the structures of the arylsulfatase protein family and contains a novel core hydrophobic pocket that may be responsible for binding and transporting CLs. Our structural and functional studies shed an important light on the mechanism of CL transport in Gram-negative bacteria from the IM to the OM, which offers great potential for the development of novel antibiotics against multi-drug resistant bacterial infections.

Vibrio cholerae causes a severe disease that kills thousands of people annually. The outer membrane protein OmpU is the most abundant outer membrane protein in V. cholerae, and has been identified as an important virulence factor that is involved in host-cell interaction and recognition, as well as being critical for the survival of the pathogenic V. cholerae in the host body and in harsh environments. The mechanism of these processes is not well understood owing to a lack of the structure of V. cholerae OmpU. Here, the crystal structure of the V. cholerae OmpU trimer is reported to a resolution of 2.2 Å . The protomer forms a 16--stranded barrel with a noncanonical N-terminal coil located in the lumen of the barrel that consists of residues Gly32-Ser42 and is observed to participate in forming the second gate in the pore. By mapping the published functional data onto the OmpU structure, the OmpU structure reinforces the notion that the long extracellular loop L4 with a -hairpin-like motif may be critical for host-cell binding and invasion, while L3, L4 and L8 are crucially implicated in phage recognition by V. cholerae.