ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2002
Single pilus motor forces exceed 100 pN.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2002. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 188 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
188 citing papers in PubMed.
- Orthogonal microfluidic approaches reveal force-enhanced migration of bacterial populations on surfaces.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- β-strand addition within tip initiation complexes licenses assembly of diverse type IV filaments.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Structural modeling reveals the mechanism of motor ATPase coordination during type IV pilus retraction.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Article
- Visualization of Type IV Pili: Linking Structural Architecture, Dynamic Function, and Translational Opportunities.Biology · 2026Review
- β-strand complementation within tip initiation complexes licenses assembly of diverse type IV filaments.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Bacterial motility in rhizosphere colonization: mechanisms, constraints, and implications for microbial inoculants.The ISME journal · 2026Review
- Costs and benefits of phytoplankton motility.ArXiv · 2025Article
- Beyond movement: the dynamic roles of Type IV pili in cyanobacterial life.Journal of bacteriology · 2025Review
- Mechanical forces and ligand binding modulateLife science alliance · 2025Article
- Saccharibacteria deploy two distinct type IV pili, driving episymbiosis, host competition, and twitching motility.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Type IV pili ofEcoSal Plus · 2024Review
- Saccharibacteria deploy two distinct Type IV pili, driving episymbiosis, host competition, and twitching motility.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Combinatorial control of type IVa pili formation by the four polarized regulators MglA, SgmX, FrzS, and SopA.Journal of bacteriology · 2024Article
- Nanovibrational Stimulation ofACS nano · 2024Article
- The bacterial flagellum as an object for optical trapping.Biophysical reviews · 2024Review
- A bacterial sense of touch: T4P retraction motor as a means of surface sensing byJournal of bacteriology · 2024Review
- Adhesion pilus retraction powers twitching motility in the thermoacidophilic crenarchaeon Sulfolobus acidocaldarius.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Data-driven modelling makes quantitative predictions regarding bacteria surface motility.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- Tight-packing of large pilin subunits provides distinct structural and mechanical properties for theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
128 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Force production by type IV pilus retraction is critical for infectivity of Neisseria gonorrhoeae and DNA transfer. We investigated the roles of pilus number and the retraction motor, PilT, in force generation in vivo at the single-molecule level and found that individual retraction events are generated by a single pilus fiber, and only one PilT complex powers retraction. Retraction velocity is constant at low forces but decreases at forces greater than 40 pN, giving a remarkably high average stall force of 110 +/- 30 pN. Further insights into the molecular mechanism of force generation are gained from the effect of ATP-depletion, which reduces the rate of retraction but not the stall force. Energetic considerations suggest that more than one ATP is involved in the removal of a single pilin subunit from a pilus. The results are most consistent with a model in which the ATPase PilT forms an oligomer that disassembles the pilus by a cooperative conformational change.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.