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  • Review Article
  • Published:

Coordinating assembly of a bacterial macromolecular machine

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 6, pages 455–465 (2008)Cite this article

Key Points

  • The bacterial flagellum is a complex organelle that is required for the motility that is driven by an ion-powered rotary motor.

  • The assembly of multiple flagellar organelles in a single cell is coupled to a sophisticated regulatory hierarchy of over 60 genes that are required for the assembly and proper function of these organelles, which allows the bacterium to direct its movement in response to chemical stimuli.

  • Multiple checkpoints occur during flagellum biogenesis to ensure that optimum size of individual parts is achieved, that specific genes are expressed at appropriate times and that a minimum of substrates are produced to maximize the efficiency of the assembly process.

  • This Review summarizes the current level of understanding of the regulation of flagellar biosynthesis and how gene regulation is coupled to this process.

Abstract

The assembly of large and complex organelles, such as the bacterial flagellum, poses the formidable problem of coupling temporal gene expression to specific stages of the organelle-assembly process. The discovery that levels of the bacterial flagellar regulatory protein FlgM are controlled by its secretion from the cell in response to the completion of an intermediate flagellar structure (the hook–basal body) was only the first of several discoveries of unique mechanisms that coordinate flagellar gene expression with assembly. In this Review, we discuss this mechanism, together with others that also coordinate gene regulation and flagellar assembly in Gram-negative bacteria.

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Figure 1: Electron micrograph images illustrating the different types of flagellar arrangement in bacteria.
Figure 2: Flagellar components of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium.
Figure 3: Coupling of flagellar gene regulation to flagellum assembly.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank K. Namba for providing the data presented in Box 2, and acknowledge funding to K.T.H. by PHS service grants GM056141 and GM062206 from the National Institutes of Health.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, University of Utah, 257 South 1400 East, Salt Lake City, 84112, Utah, USA

    Fabienne F. V. Chevance & Kelly T. Hughes

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  1. Fabienne F. V. Chevance
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Correspondence to Kelly T. Hughes.

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DATABASES

Entrez Genome Project

Caulobacter crescentus

Escherichia coli

Helicobacter pylori

Idiomarina loihiensis

Mycoplasma mobile

Neisseria gonorrhoeae

Pseudomonas aeruginosa

S. typhimurium

Vibrio cholerae

Vibrio fischeri

Entrez Protein

FlgB

FlgC

FlgD

FlgE

FlgF

FlgG

FlgJ

FlgK

FlgM

FlhA

FlhB

FliA

FliC

FliD

FliE

FliF

FliH

FliI

FliJ

FliK

FliO

FliP

FliQ

FliR

Flk

SopE

SptP

FURTHER INFORMATION

Kelly T. Hughes's homepage

Glossary

Proton motive force

(PMF). The energy source of the cell. The PMF is a combination of the membrane electrical potential and the pH gradient that is produced from the breakdown of carbohydrates by cellular catabolic pathways.

Chaperone

A type III secretion chaperone binds a secretion substrate to prevent its degradation before secretion and pilots the substrate to the secretion apparatus to facilitate export.

Sigma factor

The subunit of RNA polymerase that recognizes promoter sequences.

Bypass mutant

A mutant that works in the presence of an antagonist protein, whereas the wild-type protein is normally inhibited.

Periplasm

The region between the inner and outer membranes of Gram-negative bacteria.

Regulon

A group of genes that are coordinately regulated.

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Chevance, F., Hughes, K. Coordinating assembly of a bacterial macromolecular machine. Nat Rev Microbiol 6, 455–465 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro1887

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