{"doi":"10.1101/2023.06.05.543771","title":"An obligate intracellular bacterial pathogen forms a direct, interkingdom membrane contact site","abstract":"ABSTRACT Interorganelle communication regulates cellular homeostasis through the formation of tightly-associated membrane contact sites 1–3 . Prior work has identified several ways that intracellular pathogens alter contacts between eukaryotic membranes 4–6 , but there is no existing evidence for contact sites spanning eukaryotic and prokaryotic membranes. Here, using a combination of live-cell microscopy and transmission and focused-ion-beam scanning electron microscopy, we demonstrate that the intracellular bacterial pathogen Rickettsia parkeri forms a direct membrane contact site between its bacterial outer membrane and the rough endoplasmic reticulum (ER), with tethers that are approximately 55 nm apart. Depletion of the ER-specific tethers VAPA and VAPB reduced the frequency of rickettsia-ER contacts, suggesting these interactions mimic organelle-ER contacts. Overall, our findings illuminate a direct, interkingdom membrane contact site uniquely mediated by rickettsia that seems to mimic traditional host MCSs.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2023,"id":392419,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":5,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9609,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":930582,"name":"Patrick J. Woida","orcid":"0000-0001-7784-1148","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":267167,"name":"Stephan Kräemer","orcid":"0000-0003-0577-7444","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1000351,"name":"Rebecca L. Lamason","orcid":"0000-0002-2762-7917","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1050073,"name":"Yamilex Acevedo‐Sánchez","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":49,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:18:56.730121Z","pmid":"37333133","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}