Abstract
The bacterial flagellar motor is a reversible rotary nano-machine powered by the ion flux across the cytoplasmic membrane. Each motor rotates a long helical filament that extends from the cell body at several hundreds revolutions per second. The output of the motor is characterized by its generated torque and rotational speed. The torque can be calculated as the rotational frictional drag coefficient multiplied by the angular velocity. Varieties of methods, including a bead assay, have been developed to measure the flagellar rotation rate under various load conditions on the motor. In this chapter, we describe a method to monitor the motor rotation through a position of a 1 μm bead attached to a truncated flagellar filament.
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Acknowledgment
We thank Dr. I. Kawagishi and Dr. M. Nishikawa (Hosei Univ.) for critically reading the manuscript and Dr. Y.-S. Che for E. coli strains carrying fliC st allele. This work was supported by MEXT KAKENHI Grant Number JP15H01332, JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP15K07034, and the MEXT-Supported Program for the Strategic Research Foundation at Private Universities, 2013–2017.
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Kasai, T., Sowa, Y. (2017). Measurements of the Rotation of the Flagellar Motor by Bead Assay. In: Minamino, T., Namba, K. (eds) The Bacterial Flagellum. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1593. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-6927-2_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-6927-2_14
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