Figure 1

Passenger transport across two membranes by Autodisplay. A: The N-terminal signalpeptide facilitates the transport across the inner membrane by the so called Sec-pathway [32] and is then cut off by periplasmic signal peptidases. The C-terminal part forms a porin-like β-barrel structure inside the outer membrane through which the passenger is translocated to the surface by the linker. B and C: The structure of the precursor proteins for LipBC-FP (B) and FoldBc-FP (C) is shown schematically. The mature fusion proteins anchored inside the outer membrane only consist of the passenger (which would be here lipase or foldase, depicted in lightgrey) and the autotransporter structure (linker (white) and β-barrel (black)). (The genes for lipase and foldase were amplified from plasmid pHES8, containing the complete sequence of the B. cepacia lipase [GenBank:FJ638612] and cloned into appropriate Autodisplay-vectors via restriction sites XhoI (5′-end) and KpnI (3′-end).