Bacterial microcompartments are organelle-like structures that enhance a variety of metabolic functions in diverse bacteria. Composed entirely of proteins, thousands of homologous hexameric shell proteins tesselate to form facets while pentameric proteins form the vertices of a polyhedral shell that encapsulates various enzymes, substrates and cofactors. Recent structural data have highlighted nuanced variations in the sequence and topology of microcompartment shell proteins, emphasizing how variation and specialization enable the construction of complex molecular machines. Recent studies engineering synthetic miniaturized microcompartment shells provide additional frameworks for dissecting principles of microcompartment structure and assembly. This review updates our current understanding of bacterial microcompartment shell proteins, providing new insights and highlighting outstanding questions.

细菌微区室是细胞器样结构，可增强多种细菌的多种代谢功能。完全由蛋白质组成，数以千计的同源六聚体壳蛋白镶嵌形成小平面，而五聚体蛋白形成多面体壳的顶点，该多面体壳封装了各种酶、底物和辅助因子。最近的结构数据突出了微区室壳蛋白的序列和拓扑结构的细微变化，强调了变异和专业化如何使复杂分子机器的构建成为可能。最近的研究工程合成小型化微隔间壳为剖析微隔间结构和组装原理提供了额外的框架。这篇综述更新了我们目前对细菌微区室壳蛋白的理解，