Abstract
Protonmotive force is an essential biological energy format in all levels of cells. Protonmotive force comprises electrical and chemical potential difference across biological membrane. In bacteria, protonmotive force couples to metabolism and ATP production. Moreover, protonmotive force directly provides driving energy of bacterial flagellar motor that is critical for bacterial motility and infection. Due to the small size of bacterial cells, there were limited experimental tools to measure protonmotive force in bacteria. Recent developments of optical membrane potential and intracellular pH indicators provide valuable information on bacterial studies. These new biophysical techniques allow us to monitor the protonmotive force even in single bacterial cell level that shed the light of next generation single-cell physiological experiments towards the understanding of bacterial infection process.
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Dr. Teuta Pilizota and Dr. Bai Fan for their assistance of single-cell protonmotive force measurement. The work in my lab was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Republic of China under contract No. MOST-103-2112-M-008-013-MY3.
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Chen, MT., Lo, CJ. (2016). Using Biophysics to Monitor the Essential Protonmotive Force in Bacteria. In: Leake, M. (eds) Biophysics of Infection. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, vol 915. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32189-9_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32189-9_6
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