Bacterial flagellar motion

[curt0909]

On a few occasions I've seen bacterial flagella but always the long outstretched sine wave shape. Here I'm highlighting a different flagellum position, the forward facing flagellum.

This particular species of bacteria has a flagellum at each end of its body. When moving the rear facing flagellum extends out in a helical shape while rotating(similar to a corkscrew). The forward facing flagellum helix wraps closely around the cell body with distal end facing the rear of the cell and rotates. This forward facing flagellum over the cell body appears like threads on a screw.

Another interesting movement occurs when changing direction. When direction is changed the forward facing side of the cell shakes vigorously to help extend the flagellum away from the cell body. You can imagine if your arm was loosely wrapped with a rope, to loosen the rope you would shake your arm in a rhythmic fashion.

Nomarski DIC, 100x objective, blue light


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC5JvOUq ... re=mh_lolz

Best to watch in 1080 HD

[arturoag75]

very nice details,
i think is better if you use a green filter for more contrast..
blue filter is not good for digital camera
arturo

[curt0909]

very nice details,
i think is better if you use a green filter for more contrast..
blue filter is not good for digital camera
arturo

Thanks Art, you're right. Using blue light always requires me to kick up my ISO and you can see the resulting noise here. Next time I'll definitely try the green.

[rjlittlefield]

Interesting! I do not remember seeing this type of flagellum before.

Best to watch in 1080 HD

On my screen, the HD version of this video has obviously patterned noise that confuses me. The default 360p in a "large" player (854x510 pixels) seems a better tradeoff. Probably it varies for different screens and different people.

--Rik