Projects -Fluorescent flagella -Swimming without flagella -Gliding motility -Twitching motility -Fluorescent chemotaxis proteins -Chemotactic signaling studied by FRET -Motor force generation -Switching under load

Swimming without flagella For several years our lab worked on a species of Synechococcus (a cyanobacterium) that swims without flagella. The only way that we and others could imagine that it might swim is by propagating surface waves (either longitudinal or transverse). Aravi Samuel tried freeze-slamming a cell sample at liquid-helium temperature at Woods Hole, in the laboratory of Tom Reese. A whole new world opened up: the cell is completely covered by fine hairs a few nm in diameter by about 0.15 um long! The roots of the hairs go through the outer layers of the cell wall all the way to the inner membrane, where energy for motility is available from an electrochemical gradient. So machinery that might propel the cell has finally been visualized. See Movies, Swimming Synechococcus. References Ehlers, K.M., Samuel, A.D.T., Berg, H.C., and Montgomery, R. "Do cyanobacteria swim using traveling surface waves?" Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 93, 8340-8343 (1996). Samuel, A.D.T., Petersen, J.D., and Reese, T.S, "Envelope structure of Synechococcus sp. WH8113, a nonflagellated swimming cyanobacterium." BMC Microbiology 2001 1: 4

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Last modified Tuesday, July 23, 2003.