通俗演講 Colloquium

2023/09/12(Tue)     14:00 -16:00    一樓演講廳 1F, Auditorium

Title

Dynamic motors for bacterial flagella

Speaker

羅健榮教授 (國立中央大學物理學系)

Prof. Chien-Jung Lo (Department of Physics, National Central University)

Abstract

Many species of bacteria use flagella to swim. A flagellum consists of a bacterial flagellar motor (BFM), a hook, and a flagellar filament. The BFM is a natural rotary molecular machine that rotates at several hundred hertz driven by an electrochemical ion gradient. The motor consists of a rotor 50 nm in diameter surrounded by about 11 ion-conducting stator units, which exchange between motors and a membrane-bound pool. Bacterial flagella are dynamic, not only because they rotate and reverse, but also because some of their components exchange on a short time scale. These components’ exchange may contribute to regulatory control, functional adaptation, and system repair. In this talk, I will present the current understanding of BFM and the newly emerging picture of protein complex exchange. It is necessary to replace a binary distinction between stable complexes and transient binding partners with a description of the lifetime and exchange dynamics of each individual protein associated with a complex.

Poster

Language

演講語言 (Language): in English