BMC Shell Protein Superfamily

Bacterial Micro/NanoCompartment Shell Protein Pores Bacterial Micro- or Nano-compartments fall into a class of proteinaceous 'organelles' or machines that serve a specific metabolic function (Saier 2013 [PMID 23920489]). The metabolic enzymes are sorrounded by 'shell' proteins, many of which are homologous and form oligomeric structures containing substrate selective pores through which substrates/products/intermediates can pass with differing permeabilities (Park et al. 2017 [PMID 28829618]). BMC shell constituents can be classified depending on their oligomerization state as hexamers (BMC-H), pentamers (BMC-P) or trimers (BMC-T) (Barthe L et al, 2023 [PMID 38011088]). Shell proteins may resemble viral capsid proteins and have a cellular orign (Krupovic & Koonin, 2017 [PMID 29132422]). BMCs are not found in archaea and eukaryotes (Ravcheev et al., 2019 [PMID: 31333721]).