The presence and absence of periplasmic rings in bacterial flagellar motors correlates with stator type
- California Institute of Technology, United States
- University of Southern California, United States
- Cited 4
- Views 1,493
- Annotations
Abstract
The bacterial flagellar motor, a cell-envelope-embedded macromolecular machine that functions as a cellular propeller, exhibits significant structural variability between species. Different torque-generating stator modules allow motors to operate in different pH, salt or viscosity levels. How such diversity evolved is unknown. Here we use electron cryo-tomography to determine the in situ macromolecular structures of three Gammaproteobacteria motors: Legionella pneumophila, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Shewanella oneidensis, providing the first views of intact motors with dual stator systems. Complementing our imaging with bioinformatics analysis, we find a correlation between the motor's stator system and its structural elaboration. Motors with a single H+-driven stator have only the core periplasmic P- and L-rings; those with dual H+-driven stators have an elaborated P-ring; and motors with Na+ or Na+/H+-driven stators have both their P- and L-rings embellished. Our results suggest an evolution of structural elaboration that may have enabled pathogenic bacteria to colonize higher-viscosity environments in animal hosts.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Institutes of Health (R01 AI127401)
- Mohammed Kaplan
- Debnath Ghosal
- Poorna Subramanian
- Catherine M Oikonomou
- Andreas Kjaer
- Davi R Ortega
- Ariane Briegel
- Grant J Jensen
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (Rubicon fellowship)
- Mohammed Kaplan
Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Sahand Pirbadian
Air Force Office of Scientific Research (FA955014-1-0294)
- Mohamed Y El-Naggar
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Edward H Egelman, University of Virginia, United States
Publication history
- Received: November 8, 2018
- Accepted: December 19, 2018
- Accepted Manuscript published: January 16, 2019 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: February 14, 2019 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2019, Kaplan et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 1,493
- Page views
-
- 244
- Downloads
-
- 4
- Citations
Article citation count generated by polling the highest count across the following sources: Scopus, Crossref, PubMed Central.
Download links
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Download citations (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Further reading
-
- Evolutionary Biology
-
- Evolutionary Biology
- Genetics and Genomics
