The bacterial adenylate cyclase toxin (CyaA) is the key virulence factor of the whooping cough-causing agent Bordetella pertussis . The folding of its repeats-in-toxin (RTX) domain is critical to CyaA’s toxin activity and virulence. The RTX domain contains five RTX blocks (RTX-i to RTX-v), and its folding follows a strict vectorial, series folding pathway that starts from the folding of the C-terminal RTX-v and proceeds sequentially toward its N-terminal RTX blocks. Thus, a folded RTX-v or its equivalent is required for engineering any artificial RTX domain for biophysical and biochemical studies of other RTX blocks. By combining single-molecule optical tweezers, protein engineering, and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, here we characterized the folding pathway of RTX-v in detail and aimed to identify the minimal folding unit of RTX-v that can serve as a folding nucleus to template the folding of its N-terminal RTX blocks. Our results revealed that RTX-v folds via an on-pathway intermediate. And residues 1580-1681 constitute the minimal folding motif but with marginal stability, while residues 1573–1681 represent a more stable folding motif and serve as the on-pathway folding intermediate of RTX-v. This folding intermediate bears important implications for the design and engineering of β-roll fusion proteins.
Chen et al. (2026) studied this question.