Bacterial Surface Motility: Slime Trails, Grappling Hooks & Nozzles
نویسنده
چکیده
It has been known for decades that bacteria locomote over surfaces, but the mechanisms that power motility have been unclear. Recent experiments have begun to explain two modes of surface motility. Twitching or social gliding motility is powered by the retraction of type IV pili. Adventurous gliding motility is powered by the rearward secretion of carbohydrate slime. In both cases, cell movement depends on the translocation of enormous volumes of macromolecules through outer membrane pore complexes. In this review, we describe molecular models for surface motility and discuss how these models can inform studies of macromolecule secretion across bacterial membranes.
منابع مشابه
Bacterial Surface Motility: Slime Trails, Grappling Hooks and Nozzles
It has been known for decades that bacteria locomote over surfaces, but the mechanisms that power motility have been unclear. Recent experiments have begun to explain two modes of surface motility. Twitching or social gliding motility is powered by the retraction of type IV pili. Adventurous gliding motility is powered by the rearward secretion of carbohydrate slime. In both cases, cell movemen...
متن کاملHow Myxobacteria Glide
BACKGROUND Many microorganisms, including myxobacteria, cyanobacteria, and flexibacteria, move by gliding. Although gliding always describes a slow surface-associated translocation in the direction of the cell's long axis, it can result from two very different propulsion mechanisms: social (S) motility and adventurous (A) motility. The force for S motility is generated by retraction of type 4 p...
متن کاملIsolation of Herpetosiphon giganteus and Ultrastructure Analysis by Electron Microscopy
Herpetosiphon giganteus is a filamentous gliding bacterium. Gliding motility is the movement of the cells over surfaces without the aid of flagella. The mechanism responsible for bacterial gliding motility has not been known and there are only a few data on Herpetosiphon giganteus. The aim of this study was to observe the ultrastructure and negative staining of isolated strains of Herpetosiphon...
متن کاملSocial Interactions in Myxobacterial Swarming
Swarming, a collective motion of many thousands of cells, produces colonies that rapidly spread over surfaces. In this paper, we introduce a cell-based model to study how interactions between neighboring cells facilitate swarming. We chose to study Myxococcus xanthus, a species of myxobacteria, because it swarms rapidly and has well-defined cell-cell interactions mediated by type IV pili and by...
متن کاملSurface motility of Xylella fastidiosa visualized by oblique illumination.
Stereomicroscopic observations using oblique illuminations revealed the presence of two types of movement trails by Xylella fastidiosa strains (A- and G-genotypes) isolated from almond-leaf scorch samples on the surface of PW and PD3 culture media. The A-genotype strains showed curved motility trails, and the G-genotype strains showed straight motility trails. Haloes were found around some G-ge...
متن کامل