Timescale separation in the coordinated switching of bacterial flagellar motors.
Phys Biol
; 20(4)2023 05 10.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-37105184
ABSTRACT
The output of the bacterial chemotaxis signaling pathway, the level of the intracellular regulator CheY-P, modulates the rotation direction of the flagellar motor, thereby regulating bacterial run-and-tumble behavior. The multiple flagellar motors on anE. colicell are controlled by a common cytoplasmic pool of CheY-P. Fluctuation of the CheY-P level was thought to be able to coordinate the switching of multiple motors. Here, we measured the correlation of rotation directions between two motors on a cell, finding that it surprisingly exhibits two well separated timescales. We found that the slow timescale (â¼6 s) can be explained by the slow fluctuation of the CheY-P level due to stochastic activity of the chemotactic adaptation enzymes, whereas the fast timescale (â¼0.3 s) can be explained by the random pulse-like fluctuation of the CheY-P level, due probably to the activity of the chemoreceptor clusters. We extracted information on the properties of the fast CheY-P pulses based on the correlation measurements. The two well-separated timescales in the fluctuation of CheY-P level help to coordinate multiple motors on a cell and to enhance bacterial chemotactic performance.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Bacterial Proteins
/
Escherichia coli Proteins
Language:
En
Journal:
Phys Biol
Journal subject:
BIOLOGIA
Year:
2023
Document type:
Article