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

A bead assay. Switching under load Karen Fahrner attached beads of different sizes to flagellar filament stubs and monitored their directions of rotation. Clockwise intervals were longer at low speeds, below 50 Hz, but other changes were not marked. We know from earlier work that the torque generated by the motor changes by only a few percent between 50 Hz and stall. However, it is thought that a fixed number of protons goes through the motor each revolution (about 1200). So, can it be that the motor measures proton flux? Reference Fahrner, K.A., Ryu, W.S., and Berg, H.C. "Novel behaviour of the bacterial flagellar switch." Nature 423, 938 (2003).

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