title: Switching dynamics of the bacterial flagellar motor near zero load.
abstract: Switching dynamics of flagellar motors of Escherichia coli is commonly observed through markers attached to the flagellar filaments. To eliminate possible complications resulting from the conformational transitions of these filaments and to look at the output of motors more directly, we monitored motor rotation by attaching nanogold spheres to the hooks of cells lacking filaments. We observed exponentially distributed counterclockwise (CCW) and clockwise (CW) intervals and Lorentzian power spectra of the switching time series consistent with models that treat motor switching as a two-state Poisson process.
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale and Department of Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, China; and.
authors.forename: Fangbin
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale and Department of Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, China; and jhyuan@ustc.edu.cn hberg@mcb.harvard.edu.
authors.forename: Junhua
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yuan
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138 jhyuan@ustc.edu.cn hberg@mcb.harvard.edu.
authors.forename: Howard C
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Berg
mesh_terms: D048168:Escherichia coli K12 / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism; D005407:Flagella / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism; D006046:Gold / Q000737:chemistry*; D053768:Metal Nanoparticles / Q000737:chemistry*; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009068:Movement
chemical_list: D006046:Gold
keywords: molecular motor; motility; nanogold; switch