Adhesive chaperone-usher pili are long, supramolecular protein fibers displayed on the surface of many bacterial pathogens. The type 1 and P pili of uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) play important roles during urinary tract colonization, mediating attachment to the bladder and kidney, respectively. The biomechanical properties of the helical pilus rods allow them to reversibly uncoil in re...

Xylella fastidiosa cells were shown to exhibit twitching motility ‘upstream’ in microfabricated ‘artificial xylem vessels’. Such motility is due to extension and retraction of type IV pili present on the poles of the bacteria. Importantly, such upstream migration was subsequently demonstrated in planta. A survey of isolates from California, Texas and South Carolina revealed that all possessed m...

Pili isolated from Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAK were solubilized in the detergent octyl-glucoside. Subsequent removal of the detergent by dialysis resulted in the formation of short rods of about 9 nm in diameter and various lengths. The aggregation process was followed by ultracentrifugation, viscometry, and electron microscopy to show that the aggregates produced in this way are distinct from p...

The periplasmic chaperone FimC is a monomeric, basic 23 kDa protein of 205 amino acid residues (Klemm, 1992) that mediates the assembly of typeI pili in Escherichia coli. Type-I pili are oligomeric protein complexes anchored on the surface of the bacterium and are required for the attachment of E. coli cells to host cell surfaces that are rich in mannose (Klemm, 1992). The determination of the ...

Pili comprise several types of morphologically similar thin appendages growing out from the surface of gram-negative bacteria.'-3 Type I pili are composed of protein subunits of molecular weight 17,000 polymerized into rigid right-handed helices of diameter 70 A and pitch 24 A, having an axial hole 20-25 A in diameter.4 Other types of pili with different external diameters exist2 but their comp...

Pseudomonas aeruginosa readily binds to stainless steel and other abiotic surfaces, causing major problems in both the medical and food industries. In this study, we show that P. aeruginosa binds to abiotic surfaces in a concentration-dependent, saturable manner during the initial stages of biofilm formation. P. aeruginosa type IV pili mediate binding to stainless steel as a pilus-deficient str...

Nanowires that transfer electrons to extracellular acceptors are important in organic matter degradation and nutrient cycling in the environment. Geobacter pili of the group of Type IV pilus are regarded as nanowire-like biological structures. However, determination of the structure of pili remains challenging due to the insolubility of monomers, presence of surface appendages, heterogeneity of...