Strategies for the Analysis of Bam Recognition Motifs in Outer Membrane Proteins

Well-structured proteins interact with other proteins through surface-surface interactions. In such cases, the residues that form the interacting surface are not necessarily neighboring residues on the level of protein sequence. In contrast, unfolded or partially unfolded proteins can interact with other proteins through defined linear motifs. In the case of the β-barrel assembly machinery (BAM) in the outer membrane of Gram-negative bacteria, unfolded β-barrel proteins are recognized through a C-terminal linear motif, and are inserted into the membrane. While the exact mechanism of recognition is still under investigation, it has been shown that mutations in the recognition motif can partially or completely abolish membrane insertion. In this chapter, we demonstrate the workflow for motif discovery, motif extraction, and motif visualization on the example of the C-terminal motifs in transmembrane β-barrel proteins.