Structural characterization of encapsulated ferritin provides insight into iron storage in bacterial nanocompartments
- The University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
- Newcastle University, United Kingdom
Abstract
Ferritins are ubiquitous proteins that oxidise and store iron within a protein shell to protect cells from oxidative damage. We have characterized the structure and function of a new member of the ferritin superfamily that is sequestered within an encapsulin capsid. We show that this encapsulated ferritin (EncFtn) has two main alpha helices, which assemble in a metal dependent manner to form a ferroxidase center at a dimer interface. EncFtn adopts an open decameric structure that is topologically distinct from other ferritins. While EncFtn acts as a ferroxidase, it cannot mineralize iron. Conversely, the encapsulin shell associates with iron, but is not enzymatically active, and we demonstrate that EncFtn must be housed within the encapsulin for iron storage. This encapsulin nanocompartment is widely distributed in bacteria and archaea and represents a distinct class of iron storage system, where the oxidation and mineralization of iron are distributed between two proteins.
Data availability
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Native MS Analysis of Encapsulated Ferritin from Rhodospirillum rubrumAvailable at Edinburgh DataShare.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Royal Society (RG130585)
- Jon Marles-Wright
China Scholarship Council
- Didi He
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/N005570/1)
- David J Clarke
- Jon Marles-Wright
Wellcome Trust (098375/Z/12/Z)
- Emma J Tarrant
- Kevin J Waldron
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2016, He et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Structural characterization of encapsulated ferritin provides insight into iron storage in bacterial nanocompartments
eLife 5:e18972.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.18972
Further reading
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- Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
- Microbiology and Infectious Disease
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