title: The effect of sugars on the morphology of the bacterial flagellum.
abstract: Using dark-field microscopy, we have found that certain sugars cause the normal-to-curly helical transition of bacterial flagella. Titration of flagella isolated from Salmonella typhimurium with 16 different carbohydrates showed that: (i) only certain sugars cause the transition. There is no obvious relationship between the simple physico-chemical properties of the sugar and whether the sugar causes the transition or not; (ii) the efficacies of sugars that do cause the transition differ markedly. For these sugars there is a relationship between efficacy and molecular size. These results suggest that the specific, though weak, binding of sugars to sites on flagella cause the morphological transition.
authors.affiliation: Molecular Dynamic Assembly Project, Exploratory Research for Advanced Technology Organization, Kyoto, Japan.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Seville
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ikeda
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Hotani
mesh_terms: D002236:Carbohydrate Conformation; D002240:Carbohydrate Sequence; D002241:Carbohydrates / Q000494:pharmacology*; D005407:Flagella / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000648:ultrastructure; D007700:Kinetics; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D012486:Salmonella typhimurium / Q000187:drug effects / Q000648:ultrastructure*; D013329:Structure-Activity Relationship
chemical_list: D002241:Carbohydrates