Time: 14:00-16:00, Tuesday, September 12, 2023
Place: 1F Auditorium, Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica
Speaker: Dr. Chien-Jung Lo (Department of Physics, National Central University)
Host: Dr. Keng-Hui Lin (Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica)
Website: https://www.phys.sinica.edu.tw/lecture_detail.php?id=2761&eng=T
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, Dr. Lo 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.