Structural basis for the hijacking of endosomal sorting nexin proteins by Chlamydia trachomatis

The bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis, commonly known as chlamydia, is a frequent cause of sexually transmitted infections, and a leading cause of blindness due to infection. The bacteria must directly enter the cells of its human host to grow and multiply. Inside a human cell, the bacteria form and then develop within specialized compartments called inclusions that are surrounded by membrane. The outside of the inclusion membrane becomes coated with dozens of unique bacterial proteins. The major role of these bacterial proteins is to hijack other proteins in the human cell to generate and maintain the membrane of the inclusion compartments. One bacterial protein in particular, called IncE, is able to bind to specific host proteins called sorting nexins. These host proteins normally control the formation of tube-like membrane structures, which transport fatty molecules and proteins throughout the cell. The IncE protein is thought to recruit sorting nexins to help shape the inclusion membrane and perhaps control which types of proteins and fatty molecules associate with it. However, until now it was unknown how IncE, or any similar protein for that matter, could specifically hijack a host cell protein. Now, Paul et al. have revealed the three-dimensional structure of a human sorting nexin protein, called SNX5, bound to a small fragment of the IncE protein from chlamydia. The structure shows that the part of SNX5 that associates with IncE is the part of the protein normally thought to interact with specific fatty molecules rather than proteins. Further experiments showed that SNX5 was still recruited to the inclusion compartment when the amount of these fatty molecules in human cells was reduced. However, this was not the case if SNX5 was prevented from interaction with the IncE protein. Paul et al. also observed that the site on SNX5 where IncE binds is almost identical in related proteins from many other species, including zebrafish and worms, most of which are not hosts for chlamydia. This lead them to suspect that IncE hijacks the sorting nexin proteins by mimicking an important host protein that is yet to be discovered. Proteins in the inclusion membrane play many important roles, and so this work on IncE only provides the first glimpse at how these proteins are able to manipulate the machinery of the host cell to their own ends. Further studies will therefore be needed to understand how these proteins exploit their host environment at the molecular level, and might be targeted in new antibacterial approaches. The findings also show how studying bacteria that live within host cells, like chlamydia, can provide insight into how other molecules are normally transported within cells: a process that is fundamental to all living cells.