Journal
EMBO JOURNAL
Volume 30, Issue 14, Pages 2972-2981Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/emboj.2011.186
Keywords
bacterial flagellar motor; electron cryotomography; motility; phylogenetic profiling; subtomogram average
Categories
Funding
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Cell Center
- National Science Foundation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The bacterial flagellum is one of nature's most amazing and well-studied nanomachines. Its cell-wall-anchored motor uses chemical energy to rotate a microns-long filament and propel the bacterium towards nutrients and away from toxins. While much is known about flagellar motors from certain model organisms, their diversity across the bacterial kingdom is less well characterized, allowing the occasional misrepresentation of the motor as an invariant, ideal machine. Here, we present an electron cryotomographical survey of flagellar motor architectures throughout the Bacteria. While a conserved structural core was observed in all 11 bacteria imaged, surprisingly novel and divergent structures as well as different symmetries were observed surrounding the core. Correlating the motor structures with the presence and absence of particular motor genes in each organism suggested the locations of five proteins involved in the export apparatus including FliI, whose position below the C-ring was confirmed by imaging a deletion strain. The combination of conserved and specially-adapted structures seen here sheds light on how this complex protein nanomachine has evolved to meet the needs of different species. The EMBO Journal ( 2011) 30, 2972-2981. doi:10.1038/emboj.2011.186; Published online 14 June 2011
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