Lenka Fule, Ruben Halifa, Celia Fontana, Odile Sismeiro, Rachel Legendre, Hugo Varet, Jean-Yves Coppée, Gerald L Murray, Ben Adler, David R Hendrixson, Alejandro Buschiazzo, Shuaiqi Guo, Jun Liu, Mathieu Picardeau
Spirochetes can be distinguished from other bacteria by their spiral-shaped morphology and subpolar periplasmic flagella. This study focused on FlhF and FlhG, which control the spatial and numerical regulation of flagella in many exoflagellated bacteria, in the spirochete Leptospira. In contrast to flhF which seems to be essential in Leptospira, we demonstrated that flhG- mutants in both the saprophyte L. biflexa and the pathogen L. interrogans were less motile than the wild-type strains in gel-like environments but not hyperflagellated as reported previously in other bacteria...
October 17, 2021: Molecular Microbiology