Title: The lactic acid bacteria lactococcus lactis an surprisingly produce intracellular vesicles
Abstract:
Membrane proteins (MPs) perform a wide variety of functions vital to the survival of organisms. Involved in numerous pathologies, they are important drug targets. In spite of their functional and biotechnological importance, their study remains difficult due to their hydrophobicity and low abundance in cells. Their overexpression in heterologous systems is mandatory for their detailed structural and functional characterization. However, this strategy leads to numerous obstacles such as their toxicity to hosts and the quality of the MP produced in these systems, especially for structural studies. An original approach to produce intracellular vesicles was tested using the ability of a small MP, caveolin 1β, to generate membrane vesicles within the cytoplasm when heterologously overexpressed. Such structures were observed in Escherichia coli and insect cells. The overexpression of caveolin 1β was tested in the lactic acid bacteria, Lactococcus lactis, since these bacteria appeared to emerge as a good alternative to E. coli and because they display a very different lipid composition. Surprisingly, L. lactis was able to produce intracellular vesicles with a size comparable to E. coli h-caveolae. Biochemical and biophysical studies have been carried out to realize a deeper characterization of such nanovesicles prior to other further applications of these nanovesicles
Audience Take Away Notes :
- Eukaryotic and L. lactis use for production of nanovesicles will help people facing problems of expression of proteins of interest in classical expression systems, either prokaryotic or also give opportunities
- To develop collaborations around nanovesicles production and characterization
