A minimum functional form of the Escherichia coli BAM complex constituted by BamADE assembles outer membrane proteins in vitro.

The biogenesis of outer membrane proteins is mediated by the β-barrel assembly machinery (BAM), which is a heteropentomeric complex composed of five proteins named BamA-E in Escherichia coli. Despite great progress in the BAM structural analysis, the molecular details of BAM-mediated processes as well as the exact function of each BAM component during OMP assembly are still not fully understood. To enable a distinguishment of the function of each BAM component, it is the aim of the present work to examine and identify the effective minimum form of the E. coli BAM complex by use of a well-defined reconstitution strategy based on a previously developed versatile assay. Our data demonstrate that BamADE is the core BAM component and constitutes a minimum functional form for OMP assembly in E. coli, which can be stimulated by BamB and BamC. While BamB and BamC have a redundant function based on the minimum form, both together seem to cooperate with each other to substitute for the function of the missing BamD or BamE. Moreover, the BamA mutant also requires the function of BamD and BamE to assemble OMPs in vitro, which vice verse suggests that BamADE are the effective minimum functional form of the E. coli BAM complex.