Damian Ekiert and James Chen, Alice Fruhauf, Catherine Fan, Jackeline Ponce, Beatrix Ueberheide, Gira Bhabha | Nature, 2023 

MCE proteins are major virulence factors in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis, the world’s leading cause of death from a single infectious agent. Here, we describe the endogenous cryo-EM structure of a mycobacterial MCE protein system: a large protein complex of 10+ proteins, this is the first example of a protein complex that may span the mycobacterial cell envelope, enabling the import of fatty acids as a source of nutrients from the host cell, for survival of the pathogen.