Authors: Guillaume Tetreau, Michael R. Sawaya, Elke De Zitter, Elena A. Andreeva, Anne-Sophie Banneville, Natalie A. Schibrowsky, Nicolas Coquelle, Aaron S. Brewster, Marie Luise Grünbein, Gabriela Nass Kovacs, Mark S. Hunter, Marco Kloos, Raymond G. Sierra, Giorgio Schiro, Pei Qiao, Myriam Stricker, Dennis Bideshi, Iris D. Young, Ninon Zala, Sylvain Engilberge, Alexander Gorel, Luca Signor, Jean-Marie Teulon, Mario Hilpert, Lutz Foucar, Johan Bielecki, Richard Bean, Raphael de Wijn, Tokushi Sato, Henry Kirkwood, Romain Letrun, Alexander Batyuk, Irina Snigireva, Daphna Fenel, Robin Schubert, Ethan J. Canfield, Mario M. Alba, Frédéric Laporte, Laurence Després, Maria Bacia, Amandine Roux, Christian Chapelle, François Riobé, Olivier Maury, Wai Li Ling, Sébastien Boutet, Adrian Mancuso, Irina Gutsche, Eric Girard, Thomas R. M. Barends, Jean-Luc Pellequer, Hyun-Woo Park, Arthur D. Laganowsky, Jose Rodriguez, Manfred Burghammer, Robert L. Shoeman, R. Bruce Doak, Martin Weik, Nicholas K. Sauter, Brian Federici, Duilio Cascio, Ilme Schlichting, Jacques-Philippe Colletier
Published: 2022-07-28
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-31746-x
Source: Full article
AbstractCry11Aa and Cry11Ba are the two most potent toxins produced by mosquitocidalBacillus thuringiensissubsp.israelensisandjegathesan, respectively. The toxins naturally crystallize within the host; however, the crystals are too small for structure determination at synchrotron sources. Therefore, we applied serial femtosecond crystallography at X-ray free electron lasers to in vivo-grown nanocrystals of these toxins. The structure of Cry11Aa was determinedde novousing the single-wavelength anomalous dispersion method, which in turn enabled the determination of the Cry11Ba structure by molecular replacement. The two structures reveal a new pattern for in vivo crystallization of Cry toxins, whereby each of their three domains packs with a symmetrically identical domain, and a cleavable crystal packing motif is located within the protoxin rather than at the termini. The diversity of in vivo crystallization patterns suggests explanations for their varied levels of toxicity and rational approaches to improve these toxins for mosquito control.