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Gas Vesicles of Archaea and Bacteria

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Bacterial Organelles and Organelle-like Inclusions

Part of the book series: Microbiology Monographs ((MICROMONO,volume 34))

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Abstract

Gas vesicles are hollow nanostructures of spindle or cylinder shape produced by cyanobacteria, some heterotrophic bacteria as well as archaea. The possession of gas vesicles enables aquatic microbes to avoid sinking and to maintain a certain position in the water column; some of the gas-vesiculate strains even float at the surface. The rigid gas vesicle wall is formed solely of protein and freely permeable to gas molecules. The inner surface of the wall is hydrophobic, and surface tension presumably prevents the formation of water droplets inside. Major component is the small and hydrophobic GvpA that forms 4.6-nm-wide ribs running perpendicular to the long axis of the gas vesicle. The wall is stabilized by the second structural protein, GvpC, attached to the exterior surface. An in silico structure of GvpA is available and has been tested by amino acid substitutions to deduce sequence positions essential to form a gas-filled vesicle. Additional proteins are required for gas vesicle formation, and the gvp gene cluster involved has been investigated in haloarchaea, cyanobacteria, Serratia, Bacillus and Streptomyces. Special applications of gas vesicles in biomedical research and clinical diagnostics are their usage as effective antigen-presentation systems, or as novel reporters in acoustic resonance imaging.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG; Pf 165). Arnulf Kletzin is thanked for bioinformatic analyses, and Daniel Bollschweiler and Harald Engelhardt (Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany) for the cryo-electron micrograph of gas vesicles in Fig. 3. Kerstin Völkner (Winter), and Alisa Jost are thanked for their contributions to the studies on GvpA and the interaction of accessory Gvp proteins. Gerald Losensky is thanked for critical reading of the manuscript.

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  1. Microbiology and Archaea, Department Biology, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Felicitas Pfeifer

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  1. Institute of Microbiology, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

    Dieter Jendrossek

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Pfeifer, F. (2020). Gas Vesicles of Archaea and Bacteria. In: Jendrossek, D. (eds) Bacterial Organelles and Organelle-like Inclusions. Microbiology Monographs, vol 34. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60173-7_4

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