TY - JOUR T1 - Uncharacterized bacterial structures revealed by electron cryotomography JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/108191 SP - 108191 AU - Megan J. Dobro AU - Catherine M. Oikonomou AU - Aidan Piper AU - John Cohen AU - Kylie Guo AU - Taylor Jensen AU - Jahan Tadayon AU - Joseph Donermeyer AU - Yeram Park AU - Benjamin A. Solis AU - Andreas Kjær AU - Andrew I. Jewett AU - Alasdair W. McDowall AU - Songye Chen AU - Yi-Wei Chang AU - Jian Shi AU - Poorna Subramanian AU - Cristina V. Iancu AU - Zhuo Li AU - Ariane Briegel AU - Elitza I. Tocheva AU - Martin Pilhofer AU - Grant J. Jensen Y1 - 2017/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/02/13/108191.abstract N2 - SUMMARY STATEMENT Here we present a survey of previously uncharacterized structures we have observed in bacterial cells by electron cryotomography, in the hopes of spurring their identification and study.ABSTRACT Electron cryotomography (ECT) can reveal the native structure and arrangement of macromolecular complexes inside intact cells. This technique has greatly advanced our understanding of the ultrastructure of bacterial cells. Rather than undifferentiated bags of enzymes, we now view bacteria as structurally complex assemblies of macromolecular machines. To date, our group has applied ECT to nearly 90 different bacterial species, collecting more than 15,000 cryotomograms. In addition to known structures, we have observed several, to our knowledge, uncharacterized features in these tomograms. Some are completely novel structures; others expand the features or species range of known structure types. Here we present a survey of these uncharacterized bacterial structures in the hopes of accelerating their identification and study, and furthering our understanding of the structural complexity of bacterial cells. ER -