Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 108, Issue 27, Pages 11105-11108Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1103634108
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- National Institutes of Health through the National Center for Research Resources [P41RR002250]
- National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases [T32 AI07471]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Trypanosoma brucei is a parasitic protozoan that causes African sleeping sickness. It contains a flagellum required for locomotion and viability. In addition to a microtubular axoneme, the flagellum contains a crystalline paraflagellar rod (PFR) and connecting proteins. We show here, by cryoelectron tomography, the structure of the flagellum in three bending states. The PFR lattice in straight flagella repeats every 56 nm along the length of the axoneme, matching the spacing of the connecting proteins. During flagellar bending, the PFR crystallographic unit cell lengths remain constant while the interaxial angles vary, similar to a jackscrew. The axoneme drives the expansion and compression of the PFR lattice. We propose that the PFR modifies the in-plane axoneme motion to produce the characteristic trypanosome bihelical motility as captured by high-speed light microscope videography.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available