Bacterial flagellar switching: a molecular mechanism directed by the logic of an electric motor

Flagellar rotation regulates the phenomenon of chemotaxis in bacteria. The interaction between the stator unit and the rotor unit of the flagellar motors is responsible for switching the direction of bacterial flagellar rotation. However, the molecular interaction mechanism between the stator (MotA/MotB) and the rotor (FliG/FliM/FliN) proteins for the flagellar rotational direction switching was not very clear. To address this, the asymmetry in the copies of FliG, FliM, and FliN molecules was resolved by reconstructing the switch complex using a modeled rotor unit that fulfills the experimentally available geometric constraints. The diameter of our assembled switch complex supported the existing literature. Experimental evidence and the conformational spread model validates our constructed switch complex. Subsequently, normal mode analysis (NMA) on these constructed protomer units revealed that the most fluctuating molecule in the rotor unit is FliG, which interacts with the bacterial stator through its C-terminal domain. NMA also facilitates our understanding of the reorientation mechanism of FliG between the two states of its flagellar rotation, i.e., counter-clockwise to clockwise and vice versa. Our observations regarding speed regulation, the gap between rotor and stator, and the flagellar switching due to the activity of cytoplasmic proteins, indicate that the bacterial flagellar motor uses the same mechanism as that of an electric motor. Graphical abstract Molecular mechanism of the bacterial flagellar switch.