The extracellular juncture domains in the intimin passenger adopt a constitutively extended conformation inducing restraints to its sphere of action

Enterohemorrhagic and enteropathogenic Escherichia coli are among the most important food-borne pathogens, posing a global health threat. The virulence factor intimin is essential for the attachment of pathogenic E. coli to the intestinal host cell. Intimin consists of four extracellular bacterial immunoglobulin-like (Big) domains, D00-D2, extending into the fifth lectin subdomain (D3) that binds to the Tir-receptor on the host cell. Here, we present the crystal structures of the elusive D00-D0 domains at 1.5 Å and D0-D1 at 1.8 Å resolution, which confirms that the passenger of intimin has five distinct domains. We describe that D00-D0 exhibits a higher degree of rigidity and D00 likely functions as a juncture domain at the outer membrane-extracellular medium interface. We conclude that D00 is a unique Big domain with a specific topology likely found in a broad range of other inverse autotransporters. The accumulated data allows us to model the complete passenger of intimin and propose functionality to the Big domains, D00-D0-D1, extending directly from the membrane.