Abstract
Bacterial actins are an evolutionarily diverse family of ATP-dependent filaments built from protomers with a conserved structural fold. Actin-based segregation systems are encoded on many bacterial plasmids and function to partition plasmids into daughter cells. The bacterial actin AlfA segregates plasmids by a mechanism distinct from other partition systems, dependent on its unique dynamic properties. Here, we report the near-atomic resolution cryo-EM structure of the AlfA filament, which reveals a strikingly divergent filament architecture resulting from the loss of a subdomain conserved in all other actins and a novel mode of ATP binding. Its unusual assembly interfaces and nucleotide interactions provide insight into AlfA dynamics, and expand the range of evolutionary variation accessible to actin quaternary structure.
Significance Statement Actin filaments are dynamic cytoskeletal elements that assemble upon ATP binding. Actin homologs are present in all domains of life, and all share a similar three-dimensional structure of the assembling subunit, but evolutionary changes to subunit have generated many different actin filament structures. The filament structure of the bacterial actin AlfA, which positions plasmids - small, circular DNA molecules that encode important genes - to ensure that each daughter cell receives a copy at cell division. AlfA is different from all other actins in two critical ways: it binds to ATP in a unique way, and it is missing a quarter of the conserved structural core. These differences explain unusual AlfA assembly dynamics that underlie its ability to move plasmids.
