Description:

Title: Flagellar motors incorporate parts of type 4 pili to fine tune bacterial motility responses

Topic: Bacterial flagellar motors are complex nanomachies that vary in composition between microbes, with several boasting belts, cages and rings. The gastric pathogen Helicobacter pylori has one of the most powerful and largest motors, containing multiple proteins that are largely unknown. In this work, we identified the proteins of the H. pylori flagellar cage, and determined surprisingly that they are orthologs of type 4 pili proteins PilO, PilN and PilM. Contrary to previous predictions, the cage proteins do not enhance flagellar function but instead regulate it, promoting bacteria to stop motility under particular settings. I’ll describe our path to identify the PilO, PilN and PilM cage and what we currently know about their function. 

Speaker: Karen Ottemann, PhD, Professor, University of California-Santa Cruz

Host: Nicholas Cianciotto, PhD, Professor, Dept. of Microbiology-Immunology