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【Abstract】

Bacterial Flagellar Motor (BFM) is one of nature’s rare rotary molecular machines. It enables bacterial swimming and it is the key part of the bacterial chemotactic network, one of the best-studied chemical signaling networks in biology, which enables bacteria to direct their movement in accordance with the chemical environment. The network can sense down to nanomolar concentrations of specific chemicals on the time scale of seconds. BFMs’ rotational speed is linearly proportional to the electrochemical gradients of either proton or sodium driving ions, while its direction is regulated by the chemotactic network. Recently, it has been discovered that BFM is also a mechanosensor. Given these properties, I will present my research from the understanding of BFM functional mechanisms to the application as a multimodal biosensor. The BFMs are powerful tools for characterizing and studying the external environment, the bacterial physiology itself, and single molecular motor biophysics.