Gliding direction of <i>Mycoplasma mobile</i> correlates with the curved configuration of its cell shape.

ABSTRACT: The gliding motility of bacteria is not linear but somehow exhibits a curved trajectory. This general observation is explained by the helical structure of protein tracks (Nakane et al., 2013) or the asymmetric array of gliding machineries (Morio et al., 2016), but these interpretations have not been directly examined. Here, we introduced a simple assumption: the gliding trajectory of M. mobile is guided by the cell shape. To test this idea, the intensity profile of a bacterium, Mycoplasma mobile, was analyzed and reconstructed at the single-cell level from images captured under a highly stable dark-field microscope, which minimized the mechanical drift and noise during sequential image recording. The raw image with the size of ~1 μm, which is about four times larger than the

SUBMITTER: Suzuki K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12018303 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature