Backstroke Swimming
by Christoph — It is not widely known that sporty bacteria have also mastered the art of backstroke swimming. Among them is Caballeronia insecticola...
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Watching the flagellar motor at work
by Lucas Le Nagard — Swimming E. coli typically cover a distance equivalent to the radius of a human hair each second. It might not seem very impressive… But for a 2 µm bacterium, it corresponds to 10 body lengths per second! Much better than the swimming speed of our best athletes, which barely exceeds one body length per second. So, how does E. coli achieve this?
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Hey flagellum, shift into reverse gear!
by Christoph — In a classical manual gearbox, a gearwheel is inserted between the countershaft and the drive shaft. This reverses the direction of rotation of the drive shaft. Flagella have found a smart solution to do without an additional gearwheel in their gearbox: They run their engine along the outside of a gearwheel or, if they reverse the direction of rotation, on its inside.
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to... Flagellar Tips
by Christoph — The same frontispiece twice within a few days at STC? No, not quite. It's not about Roberto's hitchhiking phage this time, or the flagellated bacterium, or the hitchhiking spore, but about the tip of the flagellum (black, left). Disclosure: already back in 2020, I talked with Alise, who created the image, and three other passionate science illustrators...
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Heavy-duty Traffic, Microscale
by Christoph — Mention "flagella" and we microbiologists instantly think of these ingenious appendages that bacterial cells use to propel themselves through fluids of varying viscosities (archaea do this, too, with their archaella). We rarely think of them as an accessory to transport cargo. Yes "cargo," you read correctly, but maybe you remember...
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On drums: Escherichia coli
by Christoph — "Light funky groove with a rolling snare pattern and occasional fills, syncopated wood block and percussive hand‑drum and rolling conga pattern" describes a particular drum pattern (#15) by acclaimed Nigerian master drummer Tony Allen. But don't worry, you didn't stumble into the drums section...
