Protein transport in bacteria: multiple pathways and common concepts

Compartmentalization is a unifying principle of eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells and necessitates specific delivery systems that transport proteins or their corresponding mRNAs from their site of synthesis in the cytosol to their sites of function. Bacteria use a large variety of delivery systems in parallel and conceptually, these systems are divided into signal sequence dependent co- or posttranslational targeting systems and translation-independent mRNA targeting systems In my presentation, I will highlight the enormous plasticity of the bacterial targeting systems, which allow bacteria to adept to a wide range of environmental conditions.