Structural basis of iron piracy by human gut <i>Bacteroides</i>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Iron is an essential element that can be growth-limiting in microbial communities, particularly those present within host organisms. To acquire iron, many bacteria secrete siderophores, secondary metabolites that chelate ferric iron. These iron chelates can be transported back into the cell via TonB-dependent transporters in the outer membrane, followed by intracellular liberation of the iron. Pathogenic Escherichia coli and Salmonella produce siderophores during gut infection. In response to iron starvation, the human gut symbiont Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron upregulates an iron piracy system, XusABC, which steals iron-bound siderophores from the invading pathogens. Here, we investigated the molecular details of xenosiderophore uptake across the outer membrane by the XusAB complex. Our crystal and cryogenic electron microscopy structures explain how the XusB lipoprotein recognises iron-bound xenosiderophores and passes them on to the XusA TonB-dependent transporter. Moreover, we show that Xus homologues can transport a variety of siderophores with different iron-chelating functional groups.
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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) | 0.002 | 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".