ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2015
Mechanics of torque generation in the bacterial flagellar motor.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers.
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Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed.
- Heterogeneity and multi-scale dynamics in the molecular bearing of the bacterial flagellum.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Measuring molecular forces inside living cells using magnetic tweezers.Biophysical reviews · 2025Review
- Insertion of a Divergent GAF-like Domain Defines a Novel Family of YcgR Homologues That Bind c-di-GMP inACS omega · 2025Article
- Intellectual frameworks to understand complex biochemical systems at the origin of life.Nature chemistry · 2025Article
- Theoretical insights into rotary mechanism of MotAB in the bacterial flagellar motor.Biophysical journal · 2024Article
- Magnetic Control of Nonmagnetic Living Organisms.ACS applied materials & interfaces · 2024Article
- Tuning the stator subunit of the flagellar motor with coiled-coil engineering.Protein science : a publication of the Protein Society · 2023Article
- The rapid evolution of flagellar ion selectivity in experimental populations ofScience advances · 2022Article
- Inertialess gyrating engines.PNAS nexus · 2022Article
- Exopolysaccharides amylovoran and levan contribute to sliding motility in the fire blight pathogen Erwinia amylovora.Environmental microbiology · 2022Article
- Article
- A physical mechanism underlying the torque generation of the bacterial flagellar motor.The European physical journal. E, Soft matter · 2022Article
- Modeling Bacterial Flagellar Motor With New Structure Information: Rotational Dynamics of Two Interacting Protein Nano-Rings.Frontiers in microbiology · 2022Article
- Review
- Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics in Biochemical Systems and Its Application.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- Structures of the stator complex that drives rotation of the bacterial flagellum.Nature microbiology · 2020Article
- Measurement of the Internal Frictional Drag of the Bacterial Flagellar Motor by Fluctuation Analysis.Biophysical journal · 2020Article
- Evolution of the Stator Elements of Rotary Prokaryote Motors.Journal of bacteriology · 2020Review
- Mechanisms for bacterial gliding motility on soft substrates.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
- Load-dependent adaptation near zero load in the bacterial flagellar motor.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2019Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The bacterial flagellar motor (BFM) is responsible for driving bacterial locomotion and chemotaxis, fundamental processes in pathogenesis and biofilm formation. In the BFM, torque is generated at the interface between transmembrane proteins (stators) and a rotor. It is well established that the passage of ions down a transmembrane gradient through the stator complex provides the energy for torque generation. However, the physics involved in this energy conversion remain poorly understood. Here we propose a mechanically specific model for torque generation in the BFM. In particular, we identify roles for two fundamental forces involved in torque generation: electrostatic and steric. We propose that electrostatic forces serve to position the stator, whereas steric forces comprise the actual "power stroke." Specifically, we propose that ion-induced conformational changes about a proline "hinge" residue in a stator α-helix are directly responsible for generating the power stroke. Our model predictions fit well with recent experiments on a single-stator motor. The proposed model provides a mechanical explanation for several fundamental properties of the flagellar motor, including torque-speed and speed-ion motive force relationships, backstepping, variation in step sizes, and the effects of key mutations in the stator.
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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.