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Updated: Aug 11, 2026

Biophysical Characterization of Flagellar Motor Functions
Published on: January 18, 2017
Hidden stochastic nature of a single bacterial motor
Ekaterina A Korobkova1, Thierry Emonet, Heungwon Park
1The Institute for Biophysical Dynamics, The James Franck Institute, The University of Chicago, 56540 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA.
Abstract:
The rotary flagellar motor of Escherichia coli bacterium switches stochastically between the clockwise (CW) and counterclockwise (CCW) direction. We found that the CW and CCW intervals could be described by a gamma distribution, suggesting the existence of hidden Markov steps preceding each motor switch. Power spectra of time series of switching events exhibited a peaking frequency instead of the Lorentzian profile expected from standard kinetic two-state models. Our analysis indicates that the number of hidden steps may be a key dynamical parameter underlying the switching process in a single bacterial motor as well as in large cooperative molecular systems.
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