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In today's video, it is recommended that you turn on the louder sound and listen to the roar of the motor first.
Isn't this a motor like anything you've ever seen? Yes, it's a flagellated motor from the notorious Salmonella.
Salmonella can cause severe food poisoning and intestinal problems, electron microscopy below it probably looks like this:
Image courtesy of Stewart Lab
See those long flagella on its body, and Salmonella swims flexibly through these flagella. And what drives these flagella movement is the molecular motor that you see at the beginning.
This is a huge molecular machine, in the picture below, the one on the left is a GPCR protein with a large molecular weight, and the one on the right is a much larger protein, ATP synthase.
Image courtesy of Stewart Lab
But in front of the flagellar motors, they're all little guys!
Image courtesy of Stewart Lab
The flagellar motor of Salmonella is very delicate, and the other aspect of delicate is complex. Scientists, including professors Zhu Yongqun and Zhang Xing of Zhejiang University, have analyzed its structure in previous studies, including more than 10 proteins, and composed stators and movers. Several of the key ring structures in the mover look really perfect.
On April 17, 2024, a team from Vanderbilt University in the United States published an article in Nature Microbiology to analyze the ring and steering structure of a Salmonella flagellar motor with higher precision. It was they who used higher-precision data to complete the amazing video at the beginning!
It's worth saying that even with such a fascinating motor, Salmonella is still a notorious "badass", and we need to be careful about them.
Everything in the world is always multifaceted and complex. We need to be vigilant and not be blinded by the beauty of appearances, but to look at and understand them from a more comprehensive and profound perspective.
Bibliography:
1.Singh PK, Sharma P, Afanzar O, et al. CryoEM structures reveal how the bacterial flagellum rotates and switches direction. Nat Microbiol. Published online April 17, 2024. doi:10.1038/s41564-024-01674-1
2.Tan J, Zhang X, Wang X, et al. Structural basis of assembly and torque transmission of the bacterial flagellar motor. Cell. 2021; 184(10):2665-2679.e19. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.03.057
Conflict of Interest Statement
Conflict of Interest Statement
He is the co-founder and executive editor of iMeta journal, holds positions in professional institutions such as national societies, and serves as a university chair professor.
However, readers should be reminded that the company he founded and mainly works in, Beijing Warm Heart Biotechnology Research Institute Co., Ltd., is a for-profit commercial organization, and he also serves as chairman and director of this company and a number of affiliated companies.
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