Abstract
Proton-coupled oligopeptide transporters belong to the major facilitator superfamily (MFS) of membrane transporters. Recent crystal structures suggest the MFS fold facilitates transport through rearrangement of their two six-helix bundles around a central ligand binding site; how this is achieved, however, is poorly understood. Using modeling, molecular dynamics, crystallography, functional assays, and site-directed spin labeling combined with double electron-electron resonance (DEER) spectroscopy, we present a detailed study of the transport dynamics of two bacterial oligopeptide transporters, PepTSo and PepTSt. Our results identify several salt bridges that stabilize outward-facing conformations and we show that, for all the current structures of MFS transporters, the first two helices of each of the four inverted-topology repeat units form half of either the periplasmic or cytoplasmic gate and that these function cooperatively in a scissor-like motion to control access to the peptide binding site during transport.