ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2013
Dynamics of mechanosensing in the bacterial flagellar motor.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 198 papers.
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Who cites it
198 citing papers in PubMed.
- Review
- Review
- Cellular scale search and funneling drive bacterial penetration of extreme confinements.Communications physics · 2026Article
- To Move or Not to Move: When and How Bacteria Suppress Flagellar Motility.Molecular microbiology · 2026Review
- TheProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Lethal permeabilization of host bacteria to small-molecule compounds during phage penetration.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Dynamic velocity response of E. coli powered by proteorhodopsin.Biophysical reports · 2026Article
- Osmotic stress triggers fast and reversible PMF collapse in Escherichia coli.Biophysical journal · 2026Article
- Aer is a bidirectional redox sensor mediating negative chemotaxis to antibiotic-induced ROS inmBio · 2026Article
- The dynamic response of the bacterial flagellar motor to its direct intracellular input signal.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- An optically driven microstructure for torque measurement in rotary molecular motors.Microsystems & nanoengineering · 2026Article
- Bacteria break through one-micrometer-square passages by flagellar wrapping.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Flow-induced bending of flagella restrictsmBio · 2026Article
- Texas 2-step: a new model for YcgR::c-di-GMP action at the flagellar motor.Journal of bacteriology · 2025Article
- Torque-generating units of the bacterial flagellar motor are rotary motors.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Texas 2-Step: A new Model for YcgR::c-di-GMP Action at the Flagellar Motor.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Insertion of Fluorescent Proteins Near the Plug Domain of MotB Generates Functional Stator Complexes.MicrobiologyOpen · 2025Article
- Long-range coupling regulates stator dynamics in the bacterial flagellar motor.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Osmotic stress triggers fast and reversible PMF collapse inbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Signature of cooperativity in the stochastic fluctuations of small systems with application to the bacterial flagellar motor.Scientific reports · 2025Article
138 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Mechanosensing by flagella is thought to trigger bacterial swarmer-cell differentiation, an important step in pathogenesis. How flagellar motors sense mechanical stimuli is not known. To study this problem, we suddenly increased the viscous drag on motors by a large factor, from very low loads experienced by motors driving hooks or hooks with short filament stubs, to high loads, experienced by motors driving tethered cells or 1-μm latex beads. From the initial speed (after the load change), we inferred that motors running at very low loads are driven by one or at most two force-generating units. Following the load change, motors gradually adapted by increasing their speeds in a stepwise manner (over a period of a few minutes). Motors initially spun exclusively counterclockwise, but then increased the fraction of time that they spun clockwise over a time span similar to that observed for adaptation in speed. Single-motor total internal reflection fluorescence imaging of YFP-MotB (part of a stator force-generating unit) confirmed that the response to sudden increments in load occurred by the addition of new force-generating units. We estimate that 6-11 force-generating units drive motors at high loads. Wild-type motors and motors locked in the clockwise or counterclockwise state behaved in a similar manner, as did motors in cells deleted for the motor protein gene fliL or for genes in the chemotaxis signaling pathway. Thus, it appears that stators themselves act as dynamic mechanosensors. They change their structure in response to changes in external load. How such changes might impact cellular functions other than motility remains an interesting question.
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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.