The formation of these bacterial aggregates may benefit the listeria by stabilising contact with the ependyma and by slowing CSF movement through interference with ciliary functioning, thereby facilitating invasion and decreasing clearance by CSF movement.
This conformation is stabilised by contacts between its N-terminus and elements in the nucleotide-binding pocket (see Figure 2 figure supplement 4 and Parke et al., 2010; Chang et al., 2013; Gigant et al., 2013).
This spectrum is highly indicative of a largely unfolded protein, suggesting that whilst the dimer retains a large part of its structural integrity, stabilised by contacts at the dimer interface, in isolation the monomeric form of the I424S-UBA is unstable and converts to the unfolded state.
Specifically, our results suggest that transient contacts result in only transient Erk activation, irrespective of the spatial extent of the contact, whereas more slowly formed, stable contacts stabilised by the interaction of E-Cadherin result in a small but sustained Erk activation, due to the engagement of new receptors and ligands.
Second, the N-terminal helix of the GA57BK structure is structurally ordered and stabilised through crystal contacts.
By comparison, slowly-formed contacts stabilised by the formation of E-cadherin junctions in physiological calcium conditions resulted in sustained ERK activation, but the overall amount of phospho-ERK for the total population was less than for cultures maintained in low calcium concentrations [20].
In the crystals, the single protofilaments are stabilised by crystal contacts.
Given the prominent role of ERM proteins in maintaining organised apical surfaces (ie plasma membrane domains devoid of intercellular contacts), and that of Merlin in stabilising cell:cell contacts, localised intermixing could counteract the function of each, promoting a dynamic state of intercellular adhesion.
This mechanism involves the formation of a small nucleus of structure stabilised by weak, possibly long-range, contacts and the subsequent rapid collapse around this folding nucleus to yield the native state [10,12,15].
Once MreB is in the polymeric state, the presence or absence of nucleotide has very little effect on the overall structure, which is presumably stabilised by inter- and intra-protofilament contacts.
