ボツリヌス菌由来ヘマグルチニンの立体構造

抄録

Botulinum neurotoxins (BoNTs), which are produced by Clostridium botulinum, are the most potent toxins, and cause the highly lethal food poisoning. BoNTs are produced as the assemblies with non-toxic components. Hemagglutinin (HA), one of the non-toxic components, has three biological activities: one is protecting BoNT from degradation in gastrointestinal tract, another is binding activity to carbohydrates and the other is disrupting of the epithelial barrier by direct binding to E-cadherin, which are critical for oral toxicity of BoNT. Here, we review the study on the crystal structure of type B whole HA. This structure reveals whole HA to be a huge triskelion-shaped molecule composed of 12 subcomponents, and biochemical data show that these functions of HA are employed at distinct sites.