Bacterial Toll/interleukin-1 receptor (TIR) domain-containing proteins have been shown to mediate the pathogenicity and anti-viral activity of bacteria. During bacterial infection, TIR domain-containing proteins may act as virulence factors to inhibit hosts’ immune responses by interfering with Toll-like receptor signalling. Additionally, some bacterial TIR domain-containing proteins possess NAD+ nucleosidase activity, which is not only also related to the virulence of pathogenic bacteria, but also plays an important role in bacterial anti-viral defence. While several bacterial TIR domain-containing proteins have been discovered, their structure and mechanisms of NAD+ nucleosidase activity are still largely unknown 1, 2.
Here we report our studies on two bacterial TIR domain-containing proteins: PumA and AbTIR. Recent studies showed that PumA, which is from multi-drug resistant pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa PA7, is essential for PA7 strain’s virulence 3. We determined that PumA also has NAD+ nucleosidase activity. Furthermore, we found that the addition of an inhibitor of PumA NAD+ nucleosidase activity (3-AD) induces the formation of PumA filaments, and appears to trap the protein in an active conformation. Acinetobacter baumannii TIR domain-containing protein (AbTir) is one of the few bacterial proteins that has been reported to produce v-cADPR after NAD+ nucleosidase. We determined the crystal structure of AbTIR TIR domain and also observed AbTIR TIR domain filaments upon incubation with 3-AD. Further structural and functional studies will determine the structures of these filaments and investigate the role these assemblies play in bacterial virulence and anti-viral defence.