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

细胞膜包围和保护所有细菌，包括致病和有益物种。尽管细菌细胞被膜对医疗保健很重要，但关于细胞被膜生物学仍有许多未知之处。例如，在模式生物大肠杆菌中，研究和注释最好的细菌，预测的1,200个完整膜蛋白中，近三分之一的特征仍然很差或没有注释。最近，系统的遗传筛选被用来研究几乎所有已知和推定的大肠杆菌细胞膜基因之间的功能关系。结果，许多新的功能连接被发现。我建议将重点放在两个新的未注释的包膜基因模块上，它们在功能上与外膜(OM)和脂多糖(LPS)生物过程有关。在第一个模块中，三个未注释的OM蛋白(OMP)和一个未鉴定的预测周质基因显示了与OM生物发生和组装编码基因的功能相互作用。在第二个模块中，6个未注释的内膜(IM)基因与内毒素转运(LPT)机制的组件相互作用。

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.