Diverse high-torque bacterial flagellar motors assemble wider stator rings using a conserved protein scaffold.

ABSTRACT: Although it is known that diverse bacterial flagellar motors produce different torques, the mechanism underlying torque variation is unknown. To understand this difference better, we combined genetic analyses with electron cryo-tomography subtomogram averaging to determine in situ structures of flagellar motors that produce different torques, from Campylobacter and Vibrio species. For the first time, to our knowledge, our results unambiguously locate the torque-generating stator complexes and show that diverse high-torque motors use variants of an ancestrally related family of structures to scaffold incorporation of additional stator complexes at wider radii from the axial driveshaft than in the model enteric motor. We identify the protein components of these additional scaffold structures

SUBMITTER: Beeby M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4822576 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature