Pyrodictium cannulae enter the periplasmic space but do not enter the cytoplasm, as revealed by cryo-electron tomography》.pdf

Journal of Structural Biology Journal of Structural Biology 141 (2003) 34–42 /locate/yjsbi Pyrodictium cannulae enter the periplasmic space but do not enter the cytoplasm, as revealed by cryo-electron tomography Stephan Nickell,b Reiner Hegerl,b Wolfgang Baumeister,b and Reinhard Rachela,* a € € Universitaat Regensburg, Lehrstuhl fuur Mikrobiologie, D-93040 Regensburg, Germany b € Max-Planck-Institut fuur Biochemie, Abteilung Molekulare Strukturbiologie, D-82152 Martinsried, Germany Received 1 7July 2002, and in revised form 14 October 2002 Abstract The hyperthermophilic archaeon Pyrodictium grows in the form of a macroscopically visible network. It consists of cells en- trapped in an extracellular matrix of hollow tubules, the ‘‘cannulae.’’ Here, we present the three-dimensional structure of a single cell in conjunction with two extracellular cannulae, as determined by cryo-electron microscopy. To achieve this, the information from two independent tilt series of the same specimen was combined, with the specimen rotated in the second series. In the three-di- mensional tomographic reconstruction, we were able to trace the two cannulae in their full