L-type pyocins inhibit the BAM complex to kill without cell entry

Many antibiotics are ineffective against the Gram-negative pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa because of intrinsic defence mechanisms, such as the impermeable bacterial outer membrane. Here, we show that protein antibiotics called L-type pyocins kill P. aeruginosa by inhibiting the β-barrel assembly machinery (BAM) complex at the cell surface, halting outer-membrane protein assembly. Using single-particle cryo-electron microscopy, we show that L-type pyocins bind a surface-exposed region of BamA and deploy a C-terminal peptide that competitively inhibits the BAM complex, demonstrating that cell entry is not required for antibiotic activity. We combine genetics, multi-omics and cryo-electron tomography to show that BAM complex inhibition by L-type pyocins or the cyclic-peptide antibiotic, darobactin, triggers a multifaceted transcriptomic, proteomic, and morphological response. BAM inhibition ultimately leads to a catastrophic loss of membrane integrity and cell death. These results validate BAM as a target for antibiotics that do not enter the cell and define an engineerable system for their development. L-type pyocins are a class of bacteriocin-like proteins with antibacterial activity. Here, the authors show that these proteins kill the pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa by inhibiting the BAM complex at the bacterial cell surface, halting outer-membrane protein assembly.