ArticleBiophysical journal2019
Type IV Pilin Post-Translational Modifications Modulate Material Properties of Bacterial Colonies.
Article in Biophysical journal, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 23 citations in OpenAlex.
- The role of extracellular DNA inJournal of bacteriology · 2026Review
- The role of type IV pilus in the interaction ofInfection and immunity · 2026Article
- Steering the course: targeting and exploiting surface receptors in phage therapy.Journal of bacteriology · 2026Review
- Integrative Structure and Function of thebioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Pseudomonas aeruginosa as a model bacterium in antiphage defense research.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2025Review
- The Glycoworld: Glycoproteins in Nature: A General Overview of the Different Roles That Glycoproteins Exert in Living Organism.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2025Review
- Pilin antigenic variants impact gonococcal lifestyle and antibiotic tolerance by modulating interbacterial forces.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Article
- Sculpting the BacterialmBio · 2022Article
- External Stresses Affect Gonococcal Type 4 Pilus Dynamics.Frontiers in microbiology · 2022Article
- Antibiotics modulate attractive interactions in bacterial colonies affecting survivability under combined treatment.PLoS pathogens · 2021Article
- Type IV pilus retraction enables sustained bacteremia and plays a key role in the outcome of meningococcal sepsis in a humanized mouse model.PLoS pathogens · 2021Article
- Tad pilus-mediated twitching motility is essential for DNA uptake and survival of Liberibacters.PloS one · 2021Article
- Type IV pili: dynamics, biophysics and functional consequences.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2019Review
- Biofilms 2018: A diversity of microbes and mechanisms.Journal of bacteriology · 2019Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Bacterial type 4 pili (T4P) are extracellular polymers that initiate the formation of microcolonies and biofilms. T4P continuously elongate and retract. These pilus dynamics crucially affect the local order, shape, and fluidity of microcolonies. The major pilin subunit of the T4P bears multiple post-translational modifications. By interfering with different steps of the pilin glycosylation and phosphoform modification pathways, we investigated the effect of pilin post-translational modification on the shape and dynamics of microcolonies formed by Neisseria gonorrhoeae. Deleting the phosphotransferase responsible for phosphoethanolamine modification at residue serine 68 inhibits shape relaxations of microcolonies after perturbation and causes bacteria carrying the phosphoform modification to segregate to the surface of mixed colonies. We relate these mesoscopic phenotypes to increased attractive forces generated by T4P between cells. Moreover, by deleting genes responsible for the pilin glycan structure, we show that the number of saccharides attached at residue serine 63 affects the ratio between surface tension and viscosity and cause sorting between bacteria carrying different pilin glycoforms. We conclude that different pilin post-translational modifications moderately affect the attractive forces between bacteria but have severe effects on the material properties of microcolonies.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.