Geometrical Constraints on the Tangling of Bacterial Flagellar Filaments.

ABSTRACT: Many species of bacteria swim through viscous environments by rotating multiple helical flagella. The filaments gather behind the cell body and form a close helical bundle, which propels the cell forward during a "run". The filaments inside the bundle cannot be continuously actuated, nor can they easily unbundle, if they are tangled around one another. The fact that bacteria can passively form coherent bundles, i.e. bundles which do not contain tangled pairs of filaments, may appear surprising given that flagella are actuated by uncoordinated motors. In this article, we establish the theoretical conditions under which a pair of rigid helical filaments can form a tangled bundle, and we compare these constraints with experimental data collected from the literature. Our results suggest that b

SUBMITTER: Tatulea-Codrean M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7242426 | biostudies-literature | 2020 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature