FliO is an evolutionarily conserved yet diversified core component of the bacterial flagellar type III secretion system.

ABSTRACT: The bacterial flagellum is a complex nanomachine essential for motility, environmental sensing, and host colonization. While many of its core components have been well characterized, the relevance of proteins such as FliO, which are inconsistently annotated and poorly conserved at the sequence level, has remained ambiguous in their evolutionary and functional status. Here, we present a comprehensive phylogenomic and structural analysis of FliO across >30,000 representative genomes spanning >100 bacterial phyla. Additionally, during this analysis, we found that approximately 40% of bacterial genomes contain flagellar genes-significantly fewer than previously reported. Using a custom pipeline combining low-threshold Hidden Markov models searches, operon context analysis, and structural infor

SUBMITTER: Andrianova EP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12403147 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature