TY - JOUR
T1 - A rotary motor drives Flavobacterium gliding
AU - Shrivastava, Abhishek
AU - Lele, Pushkar P.
AU - Berg, Howard C.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Mark J. McBride at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for providing the antibody used in this study. This work was supported by NIH Grant AI016478.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2015/2/2
Y1 - 2015/2/2
N2 - Cells of Flavobacterium johnsoniae, a rod-shaped bacterium devoid of pili or flagella, glide over glass at speeds of 2-4 μm/s [1]. Gliding is powered by a protonmotive force [2], but the machinery required for this motion is not known. Usually, cells move along straight paths, but sometimes they exhibit a reciprocal motion, attach near one pole and flip end over end, or rotate. This behavior is similar to that of a Cytophaga species described earlier [3]. Development of genetic tools for F. johnsoniae led to discovery of proteins involved in gliding [4]. These include the surface adhesin SprB that forms filaments about 160 nm long by 6 nm in diameter, which, when labeled with a fluorescent antibody [2] or a latex bead [5], are seen to move longitudinally down the length of a cell, occasionally shifting positions to the right or the left. Evidently, interaction of these filaments with a surface produces gliding. To learn more about the gliding motor, we sheared cells to reduce the number and size of SprB filaments and tethered cells to glass by adding anti-SprB antibody. Cells spun about fixed points, mostly counterclockwise, rotating at speeds of 1 Hz or more. The torques required to sustain such speeds were large, comparable to those generated by the flagellar rotary motor. However, we found that a gliding motor runs at constant speed rather than at constant torque. Now, there are three rotary motors powered by protonmotive force: the bacterial flagellar motor, the Fo ATP synthase, and the gliding motor.
AB - Cells of Flavobacterium johnsoniae, a rod-shaped bacterium devoid of pili or flagella, glide over glass at speeds of 2-4 μm/s [1]. Gliding is powered by a protonmotive force [2], but the machinery required for this motion is not known. Usually, cells move along straight paths, but sometimes they exhibit a reciprocal motion, attach near one pole and flip end over end, or rotate. This behavior is similar to that of a Cytophaga species described earlier [3]. Development of genetic tools for F. johnsoniae led to discovery of proteins involved in gliding [4]. These include the surface adhesin SprB that forms filaments about 160 nm long by 6 nm in diameter, which, when labeled with a fluorescent antibody [2] or a latex bead [5], are seen to move longitudinally down the length of a cell, occasionally shifting positions to the right or the left. Evidently, interaction of these filaments with a surface produces gliding. To learn more about the gliding motor, we sheared cells to reduce the number and size of SprB filaments and tethered cells to glass by adding anti-SprB antibody. Cells spun about fixed points, mostly counterclockwise, rotating at speeds of 1 Hz or more. The torques required to sustain such speeds were large, comparable to those generated by the flagellar rotary motor. However, we found that a gliding motor runs at constant speed rather than at constant torque. Now, there are three rotary motors powered by protonmotive force: the bacterial flagellar motor, the Fo ATP synthase, and the gliding motor.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84922876838&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84922876838&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.cub.2014.11.045
DO - 10.1016/j.cub.2014.11.045
M3 - Article
C2 - 25619763
AN - SCOPUS:84922876838
VL - 25
SP - 338
EP - 341
JO - Current Biology
JF - Current Biology
SN - 0960-9822
IS - 3
ER -