Motility and chemotaxis in Agrobacterium tumefaciens surface attachment and biofilm formation.

ABSTRACT: Bacterial motility mechanisms, including swimming, swarming, and twitching, are known to have important roles in biofilm formation, including colonization and the subsequent expansion into mature structured surface communities. Directed motility requires chemotaxis functions that are conserved among many bacterial species. The biofilm-forming plant pathogen Agrobacterium tumefaciens drives swimming motility by utilizing a small group of flagella localized to a single pole or the subpolar region of the cell. There is no evidence for twitching or swarming motility in A. tumefaciens. Site-specific deletion mutations that resulted in either aflagellate, flagellated but nonmotile, or flagellated but nonchemotactic A. tumefaciens derivatives were examined for biofilm formation under static and f

SUBMITTER: Merritt PM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2168663 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature