Campylobacter jejuni motility integrates specialized cell shape, flagellar filament, and motor, to coordinate action of its opposed flagella
File(s)journal.ppat.1008620.pdf (2.47 MB)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Campylobacter jejuni rotates a flagellum at each pole to swim through the viscous mucosa of its hosts’ gastrointestinal tracts. Despite their importance for host colonization, however, how C. jejuni coordinates rotation of these two opposing flagella is unclear. As well as their polar placement, C. jejuni’s flagella deviate from the norm of Enterobacteriaceae in other ways: their flagellar motors produce much higher torque and their flagellar filament is made of two different zones of two different flagellins. To understand how C. jejuni’s opposed motors coordinate, and what contribution these factors play in C. jejuni motility, we developed strains with flagella that could be fluorescently labeled, and observed them by high-speed video microscopy. We found that C. jejuni coordinates its dual flagella by wrapping the leading filament around the cell body during swimming in high-viscosity media and that its differentiated flagellar filament and helical body have evolved to facilitate this wrapped-mode swimming.
Date Issued
2020-07-02
Date Acceptance
2020-05-11
Citation
PLoS Pathogens, 2020, 16 (7), pp.1-24
ISSN
1553-7366
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Start Page
1
End Page
24
Journal / Book Title
PLoS Pathogens
Volume
16
Issue
7
Copyright Statement
© 2020 Cohen et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Sponsor
National Institutes of Health
Medical Research Council (MRC)
Identifier
https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1008620
Grant Number
RGC0000000399
MR/P019374/1
Subjects
0605 Microbiology
1107 Immunology
1108 Medical Microbiology
Virology
Publication Status
Published online
Date Publish Online
2020-07-02