MyD88 and MAL are Toll-like receptor (TLR) adaptors that signal to induce pro-inflammatory cytokine production. We previously observed that the TIR domain of MAL (MAL^TIR) forms filaments in vitro and induces formation of crystalline higher-order assemblies of the MyD88 TIR domain (MyD88^TIR). These crystals are too small for conventional X-ray crystallography, but are ideally suited to structure determination by microcrystal electron diffraction (MicroED) and serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX). Here, we present MicroED and SFX structures of the MyD88^TIR assembly, which reveal a two-stranded higher-order assembly arrangement of TIR domains analogous to that seen previously for MAL^TIR. We demonstrate via mutagenesis that the MyD88^TIR assembly interfaces are critical for TLR4 signaling in vivo, and we show that MAL promotes unidirectional assembly of MyD88^TIR. Collectively, our studies provide structural and mechanistic insight into TLR signal transduction and allow a direct comparison of the MicroED and SFX techniques.

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