Elucidating the Role of Novel Cell Envelope Integrity Factors of Escherichia coli

细胞包膜包围并保护所有细菌，包括致病菌和有益菌。尽管细菌细胞包膜对医疗保健的重要性，许多仍然是未知的关于细胞包膜生物学。例如，在模式生物大肠杆菌中，研究和注释最好的细菌，在1200个预测的整体膜蛋白中，有近三分之一的蛋白特征很差或没有注释。最近，系统的遗传筛选被用于研究大肠杆菌几乎所有已知和假定的细胞包膜基因之间的功能关系。结果，许多新的功能连接被发现。我建议特别关注与外膜（OM）和脂多糖（LPS）生物过程功能相关的无注释包膜基因的两个新模块。在第一个模块中，三个未注释的OM蛋白（OMPs）和一个未表征的预测外质基因与编码OM生物发生和组装的基因表现出功能性相互作用。在第二个模块中，六个未注释的内膜（IM）基因与LPS转运（LPT）机制的组成部分相互作用。

The cell envelope surrounds and protects all bacteria, including pathogenic and beneficial species. Despite the importance of bacterial cell envelope to healthcare, much still remains unknown about the cell envelope biology. For example, in the model organism Escherichia coli, the best studied and annotated bacterium, nearly one-third of the 1,200 predicted integral membrane proteins remain poorly characterized or unannotated. Recently, systematic genetic screens were used to study functional relationships among virtually all known and putative cell envelope genes of E. coli. As a result, many novel functional connections were uncovered. I propose to focus specifically on the two novel modules of unannotated envelope genes that are functionally linked to outer membrane (OM) and lipopolysaccharide (LPS) bioprocesses. In the first module, three unannotated OM proteins (OMPs) and an uncharacterized predicted periplasmic gene displayed functional interaction with genes encoding OM biogenesis and assembly. In the second module, six unannotated inner membrane (IM) genes interacted with the components of the LPS transport (LPT) machinery.