[Erh-Min Lai] The recipient factors affect the T6SS killing outcome

The type VI secretion system (T6SS) is a bacterial competition weapon that resembles a crossbow with an arrow. The toxic proteins/effectors can be loaded onto the arrow tip or the shaft and shoot into a recipient cell for intoxication, known as the T6SS killing. The T6SS killing outcome is dependent on the recipient cell, but little is known about what and how recipient cell factors affect the T6SS killing. Using the high-throughput interbacterial competition screening platform that they developed, Erh-Min Lai  and colleagues found that A. tumefaciens T6SS killing was stronger when the E. coli recipient cell harbors clpP, gltA, ydhS, and ydaE. They further demonstrated that the ClpAP complex, formed by the ClpP protease and its adapter protein ClpA, in the recipient cell act in enhancing the recipient’s susceptibility to the A. tumefaciens T6SS attack. This work is mainly contributed by first author Dr. Hsiao-Han Lin, a former Ph.D. student at the Lai lab and the Institute of Biotechnology, National Taiwan University, and published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology (Lin et al., 2020) . The corresponding authors are Erh-Min Lai and Associate Professor Chi-Te Liu  at the Institute of Biotechnology, National Taiwan University. Other authors contributed to this work include postdoc Manda Yu, postdoc Manoj K Sriramoju at Institute of Biological Chemistry, Academia Sinica, and Associate Research Fellow Shang-Te Danny Hsu  at Institute of Biological Chemistry, Academia Sinica.