by Am­ber Pol­lack-Berti — I'll ad­mit, I've been in love with the type IV pili (T4P) for a long time. Af­ter mem­o­riz­ing all those com­plex path­ways for reg­u­la­tion and me­tab­o­lism, there was some­thing so re­fresh­ing and ac­ces­si­ble about pili. These bac­te­r­ial sur­face ap­pendages are, by their na­ture, me­chan­i­cal struc­tures. They are...