ArticleeLife2017
Bacterial flagella grow through an injection-diffusion mechanism.
Article in eLife, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 53 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.
The trial behind it
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
53 citing papers in PubMed, 90 citations in OpenAlex.
- FlgJ cell-wall hydrolyzing activity enhances, but is not required, for flagellum assembly inJournal of bacteriology · 2026Article
- Structure of the proton-powered secretion motor at the heart of the bacterial flagellum.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- The structure of the Vibrio alginolyticus flagellar filament suggests molecular mechanism for the rotation of sheathed flagella.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Article
- The structure of the complete extracellular bacterial flagellum reveals the mechanism of flagellin incorporation.Nature microbiology · 2025Article
- Article
- Risk-reward trade-off during carbon starvation generates dichotomy in motility endurance among marine bacteria.Nature microbiology · 2025Article
- Single-Cell Force Spectroscopy Uncovers Root Zone- and Bacteria-Specific Interactions.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2025Article
- Bacterial motility depends on a critical flagellum length and energy-optimized assembly.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Decoding Bacterial Motility: From Swimming States to Patterns and Chemotactic Strategies.Biomolecules · 2025Review
- A physical model for M1-mediated influenza A virus assembly.Biophysical journal · 2025Article
- FlaG competes with FliS-flagellin complexes for access to FlhA in the flagellar T3SS to controlProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- FlhE functions as a chaperone to prevent formation of periplasmic flagella in Gram-negative bacteria.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Strategies of bacterial detection by inflammasomes.Cell chemical biology · 2024Review
- Article
- Quantifying Substrate Protein Secretion via the Type III Secretion System of the Bacterial Flagellum.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2024Article
- Structure, Assembly, and Function of Flagella Responsible for Bacterial Locomotion.EcoSal Plus · 2023Review
- Virulence-associated type III secretion systems in Gram-negative bacteria.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2023Review
- An unbroken network of interactions connecting flagellin domains is required for motility in viscous environments.PLoS pathogens · 2023Article
- Cave Thiovulum (Candidatus Thiovulum stygium) differs metabolically and genomically from marine species.The ISME journal · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
12 authors at 7 institutions in 5 countries.
Funding
Abstract
The bacterial flagellum is a self-assembling nanomachine. The external flagellar filament, several times longer than a bacterial cell body, is made of a few tens of thousands subunits of a single protein: flagellin. A fundamental problem concerns the molecular mechanism of how the flagellum grows outside the cell, where no discernible energy source is available. Here, we monitored the dynamic assembly of individual flagella using in situ labelling and real-time immunostaining of elongating flagellar filaments. We report that the rate of flagellum growth, initially ∼1,700 amino acids per second, decreases with length and that the previously proposed chain mechanism does not contribute to the filament elongation dynamics. Inhibition of the proton motive force-dependent export apparatus revealed a major contribution of substrate injection in driving filament elongation. The combination of experimental and mathematical evidence demonstrates that a simple, injection-diffusion mechanism controls bacterial flagella growth outside the cell.
Indexed as
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What OpenQuestion holds
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.