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Evolution of the Chaperone/Usher Assembly Pathway: Fimbrial Classification Goes Greek

Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, School of Medicine, University of California at Davis, One Shields Ave., Davis, California 95616-8645

Summary: Many Proteobacteria use the chaperone/usher pathway to assemble proteinaceous filaments on the bacterial surface. These filaments can curl into fimbrial or nonfimbrial surface structures (e.g., a capsule or spore coat). This article reviews the phylogeny of operons belonging to the chaperone/usher assembly class to explore the utility of establishing a scheme for subdividing them into clades of phylogenetically related gene clusters. Based on usher amino acid sequence comparisons, our analysis shows that the chaperone/usher assembly class is subdivided into six major phylogenetic clades, which we have termed -, β-, -, -, -, and -fimbriae. Members of each clade share related operon structures and encode fimbrial subunits with similar protein domains. The proposed classification system offers a simple and convenient method for assigning newly discovered chaperone/usher systems to one of the six major phylogenetic groups.

Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://mmbr.asm.org/.

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