Essential for F plasmid conjugative transfer. May interact with the recipient cell surface to stabilize mating pairs initiated by F-pili. May interact with TraG (Probable). Transfer requires OmpA and lipopolysaccharide (LPS), which are possibly receptors for TraN (PubMed:9696748, PubMed:16272376). Interacts with OmpA of recipient cells (Probable) (PubMed:16272376). Might form multimers (PubMed:16272376). May interact with TraG (Probable). Part of the protein is accessible to externally added proteases (PubMed:1593622, PubMed:16272376). A topology of the protein suggesting it is a beta-barrel has been proposed; this was not confirmed using bioinformatics programs available in April 2019 (Probable). The first 350 residues are required for recognition of OmpA. Has higher gel mobility under non-reducing conditions, suggesting it has disulfide bonds; a dsbA deletion mutant has considerably less TraN that is still localized in the outer membrane. Greatly decreased conjugtive transfer.