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Abstract

The bacterial type VI secretion system (T6SS) uses contraction of a long sheath to quickly thrust a tube with associated effectors across membranes of eukaryotic and bacterial cells. Only limited structural information is available about the inherently unstable precontraction state of the T6SS. Here, we obtain a 3.7 Å resolution structure of a non-contractile sheath–tube complex using cryo-electron microscopy and show that it resembles the extended T6SS inside Vibrio cholerae cells. We build a pseudo-atomic model of the complete sheath–tube assembly, which provides a mechanistic understanding of coupling sheath contraction with pushing and rotating the inner tube for efficient target membrane penetration. Our data further show that sheath contraction exposes a buried recognition domain to specifically trigger the disassembly and recycling of the T6SS sheath by the cognate ATP-dependent unfoldase ClpV.