Visualization of the type III secretion sorting platform of <i>Shigella flexneri</i>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Bacterial type III secretion machines are widely used to inject virulence proteins into eukaryotic host cells. These secretion machines are evolutionarily related to bacterial flagella and consist of a large cytoplasmic complex, a transmembrane basal body, and an extracellular needle. The cytoplasmic complex forms a sorting platform essential for effector selection and needle assembly, but it remains largely uncharacterized. Here we use high-throughput cryoelectron tomography (cryo-ET) to visualize intact machines in a virulent Shigella flexneri strain genetically modified to produce minicells capable of interaction with host cells. A high-resolution in situ structure of the intact machine determined by subtomogram averaging reveals the cytoplasmic sorting platform, which consists of a central hub and six spokes, with a pod-like structure at the terminus of each spoke. Molecular modeling of wild-type and mutant machines allowed us to propose a model of the sorting platform in which the hub consists mainly of a hexamer of the Spa47 ATPase, whereas the MxiN protein comprises the spokes and the Spa33 protein forms the pods. Multiple contacts among those components are essential to align the Spa47 ATPase with the central channel of the MxiA protein export gate to form a unique nanomachine. The molecular architecture of the Shigella type III secretion machine and its sorting platform provide the structural foundation for further dissecting the mechanisms underlying type III secretion and pathogenesis and also highlight the major structural distinctions from bacterial flagella.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".