Purification, crystallization and preliminary X-ray analysis of FliT, a bacterial flagellar substrate-specific export chaperone

The assembly process of the bacterial flagellum is coupled to flagellar gene expression. FliT acts not only as a flagellar type III substrate-specific export chaperone for the filament-capping protein FliD but also as a negative regulator that suppresses flagellar gene expression through its specific interaction with the master regulator FlhD₄C₂ complex. In this study, FliT of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium was expressed, purified and crystallized. Crystals of SeMet FliT were obtained by the sitting-drop vapour-diffusion technique with potassium/sodium tartrate as the precipitant. The crystals grew in the trigonal space group P3₁21 or P3₂21 and diffracted to 3.2 Å resolution. The anomalous difference Patterson map of the SeMet FliT crystal showed significant peaks in its Harker sections, indicating the usefulness of the derivative data for structure determination.