Stochastic fluctuations in the rotation of the bacterial flagellar motor

doi:10.1088/1674-1056/acc804

Abstract The bacterial flagellar motor is a nanometer-sized rotary motor that generates the torque to drive the rotation of the flagellar filament. The output torque is an important property of the motor. The motor rotation was usually monitored by attaching a μm-sized bead to a shortened flagellar filament, and the torque was extracted by calculating the torque due to the viscous drag of the medium on the bead rotation. We sought for an independent extraction of the torque from thermal fluctuation in the motor rotation using the fluctuation theorem (FT). However, we identified an overwhelming fluctuation beyond the thermal noise that precluded the use of FT. We further characterized the timescale and the amplitude of this fluctuation, finding that it was probably due to the stepping of the motor. The amplitude of torque fluctuation we characterized here provided new information on the torque-generating interaction potential curve.

Keywords: motor torque bacterial motility fluctuation theorem viscous drag

Received: 01 February 2023
Revised: 16 March 2023
Accepted manuscript online: 28 March 2023

PACS:	87.85.gj	(Movement and locomotion)
	87.15.Ya	(Fluctuations)
	87.17.Jj	(Cell locomotion, chemotaxis)
	05.10.Gg	(Stochastic analysis methods)

Fund: Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11925406 and 12090053) and the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2019YFA0709303).

Corresponding Authors: Rongjing Zhang, Junhua Yuan
E-mail: rjzhang@ustc.edu.cn;jhyuan@ustc.edu.cn

Cite this article:

Guanhua Yue(岳冠骅), Rongjing Zhang(张榕京), and Junhua Yuan(袁军华) Stochastic fluctuations in the rotation of the bacterial flagellar motor 2023 Chin. Phys. B 32 068703

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Stochastic fluctuations in the rotation of the bacterial flagellar motor

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