A Delicate Nanoscale Motor Made by Nature—The Bacterial Flagellar Motor
Ruidong Xue1, Qi Ma1, Matthew A. B. Baker2,* andFan Bai1,*
Version of Record online: 25 JUN 2015
Advanced Science
Volume 2, Issue 9, September 2015
© 2015 The Authors. Published by WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Keywords: molecular motor;bacterial flagellum; bacterial motility; chemotaxis;
nanobiotechnology
The bacterial flagellar motor (BFM) is a molecular complex ca. 45 nm in diameter that rotates the propeller that makes nearly all bacteria swim. The motor self-assembles out of ca. 20 different proteins and can not only rotate at up to 50 000 rpm, but can also switch rotational direction in milliseconds and navigate its environment to maneuver, on average, towards regions of greater benefit. The BFM is a pinnacle of evolution that informs and inspires the design of novel nanotechnology in the new era of synthetic biology.
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