Abstract
The bacterial flagellar filament is a helical propeller. Its tubular structure is made of 11 protofilaments of a single protein, flagellin, and yet, the filament switches between left- and right-handed supercoiled forms to allow bacteria to switch their swimming mode between “run” and “tumble”. The mechanism of supercoiling and switching has been shown to involve an axial sliding switch between neighboring protofilaments coupled with a highly precise lengthwise switch of individual protofilament. The structure of the two types of straight filaments and a crystal structure of the protofilament are described in detail, which explains how flagellin can build such a dynamic structure.
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Namba, K. (2002). Structural Insight into the Mechanism of Supercoiling of the Bacterial Flagellar Filament. In: Drew, H.R., Pellegrino, S. (eds) New Approaches to Structural Mechanics, Shells and Biological Structures. Solid Mechanics and Its Applications, vol 104. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9930-6_37
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9930-6_37
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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