Formation of Bacterial Flagella I. Demonstration of a Functional Flagellin Pool in Spirillum serpens and Bacillus subtilis

Abstract

Angeles), AND E. Z. GORDEE. Formation of bacterial flagella. I. Demonstration of a functional flagellin pool in Spirillum serpens and Bacillus subtilis. J. Bacteriol. 91:870-875. 1966-Exponentially growing cultures of Spirillum serpens and Bacillus subtilis regained motility and flagella within one generation after mechanical deflagellation. Regeneration of flagella occurred in both cultures in the presence of chloramphenicol at concentrations shown to inhibit flagellin synthesis. Cells labeled with C'4-amino acids regenerated radioactive flagella in the presence of chloramphenicol. A conditional mutant of S. serpens (T-45) was isolated. This strain did not produce flagella when grown at 45 C, but formed the organelles upon temperature shift to 30 C, even in the presence of chloramphenicol. A reduction of intracellular antibody-precipitable flagellin counts in labeled S. serpens T-45 occurred concomitant with the generation of flagella at 30 C. The data suggest that the flagella of S. serpens and B. subtilis are formed from a pool of intracellular flagellin proteins.

Self-assembly of biological structures.

“…When S. serpens divides, each daughter cell inherits a tuft of flagella at one end and grows a tuft at the other. The inherited tuft stays the same size as at division (151). However, Martinez and Gordee observed that if the cell is deflagellated, both ends grow fresh tufts.…”

Cell envelope associations of Aquaspirillum serpens flagella

“…An attractive feature of structural models such as this one is the stimulus to correlate morphogenetic information. There is evidence that monomeric flagellin protein is synthesized on ribosomes (14), and subsequently it must somehow be directed towards the cell envelope for "export." Since flagella are also known to extend in length by addition of subunits at their distal end (12), a mechanism for the transport of flagellin must be invoked.…”

Genetics and chemistry of bacterial flagella.

“…The presence of a functional flagellin pool in bacterial cells was inferred from Ouchterlony or quantitative precipitation tests on cell lysates of P. vulgaris and B. subtilis (D. Nasser and H. Koffler, Bacteriol Proc., p. 35, 1963; D. Weinstein, H. Koffler, and M. Moskowitz, Bacteriol. Proc., p. 63,1960) and also from the regeneration experiment on flagella of B. subtilis (148). However, Kerridge (109) studied the kinetics of isotope incorporation into flagella, and concluded that a functional pool of flagellin is not present in S. typhimurium.…”