Role of moonlighting proteins in gut bacteria

Abstract

The colonization characteristics of gut bacteria in the intestinal tract are important to understand their potential survival strategies. Bacterial surface adhesion factors are known to be the predominant bacterial molecules involved in hostmicrobe interaction. Moonlighting refers to the ability of proteins to exert multiple biologically important functions in gut bacteria. The moonlighting proteins have canonical functions in essential cellular processes, such as glycolysis, chaperone activity, and protein synthesis, whereas in their cytoplasmic form, following secretion and localization to the cell surface, they often exert additional functions as an adhesion factor. Here we review the moonlighting proteinmediated colonization process of the gut bacteria, with a focus on the elongation factor Tu (EF-Tu). In addition, we will introduce a new experimental method for evaluating the behavior of moonlighting proteins in vivo.