Intimins are members of a family of bacterial adhesins from pathogenic Escherichia coli which specifically interact with diverse eukaryotic cell surface receptors. The EaeA intimin from enterohemorrhagic E. coli O157:H7 contains an N-terminal transporter domain, which resides in the bacterial outer membrane and promotes the translocation of four C-terminally attached passenger domains across the bacterial cell envelope. We investigated whether truncated EaeA intimin lacking two carboxy-terminal domains could be used as a translocator for heterologous passenger proteins. We found that a variant of the trypsin inhibitor Ecballium elaterium trypsin inhibitor II (EETI-II), interleukin 4, and the Bence-Jones protein REI v were displayed on the surface of E. coli K-12 via fusion to truncated intimin. Fusion protein net accumulation in the outer membrane could be regulated over a broad range by varying the cellular amount of suppressor tRNA that is necessary for translational readthrough at an amber codon residing within the truncated eaeA gene. Intimin-mediated adhesion of the bacterial cells to eukaryotic target cells could be mimicked by surface display of a short fibrinogen receptor binding peptide containing an arginine-glycine-aspartic acid sequence motif, which promoted binding of E. coli K-12 to human platelets. Cells displaying a particular epitope sequence fused to truncated intimin could be enriched 200,000-fold by immunofluorescence staining and fluorescence-activated cell sorting in three sorting rounds. These results demonstrate that truncated intimin can be used as an anchor protein that mediates the translocation of various passenger proteins through the cytoplasmic and outer membranes of E. coli and their exposure on the cell surface. Intimin display may prove a useful tool for future protein translocation studies with interesting biological and biotechnological ramifications.In recent years there has been considerable progress in the development of expression systems for the display of heterologous peptides and proteins on the surfaces of bacteria and yeasts (6,16,31). Cells displaying peptides and proteins such as receptors, antibodies, and enzymes are of considerable value for various biotechnological applications, such as bioseparations, vaccine development, and combinatorial library screening. Numerous anchor proteins that mediate the translocation of passenger proteins through the cytoplasmic and outer membranes of Escherichia coli and their exposure on the cell surface have been used. Short peptides (less than approximately 50 amino acids [aa]) were successfully displayed on the cell surface by insertion into surface-exposed loops of fimbrial proteins (24) or outer membrane proteins like LamB (7) or PhoE (2). Larger passenger domains could be presented on the E. coli cell surface by insertion into a surface-exposed domain of the E. coli flagellin FliC (50), by carboxy-terminal fusion to Lpp-OmpA (a hybrid protein consisting of parts of the E. coli lipoprotein Lpp and OmpA protein [9,12]), by usi...