AlgE alginate transporter

The pore that Pseudomonas aeruginosa uses to export alginate for its biofilms.

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AlgE sits in the outer membrane of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, the bacterium behind many hospital and cystic fibrosis lung infections, and lets out the alginate it uses to build protective biofilms. The structures, from crystals grown in the lipidic cubic phase in Martin Caffrey’s lab (4AFK, with further crystal forms in 4AZL and 4B61), show two gates either side of a selectivity pore that seem to open in turn to let alginate through.

I helped collect and process the data, refine it and solve the structure, and I’m one of the authors of the PDB entries. I’m not an author of the paper that describes them, Tan et al., Acta Crystallographica D (2014).