Figure - PMC

Skip to main content

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

View full-text article in PMC

. 2026 Jan 20;17:713. doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-67507-9

Search in PMC
Search in PubMed
View in NLM Catalog
Add to search

© The Author(s) 2025

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

PMC Copyright notice

Fig. 4 — a Sequential images of the flagellar filament during cell switchbacks. Upper: Numerical calculation of the flexible and rigid hook. The coil form of flagellar filaments is transformed by the CW rotation. Lower: Fluorescent images of C. insecticola and B. anthina. See also Movie S18. b Schematic of the genetic swapping of hook by flgE deletion and transformation. c Motility assay on soft agar of the flgE swapping mutants. d Characterization of flgE swapping mutants. Left: Swimming speed for 1.0 s in growth medium. Center: Variance of the flagellar orientation angle σ. Right: Cell displacement for 1 min in Q-1D. Box plots present the minimum, maximum, sample median, and the first and third quartiles. Schematic of the measurements is presented at the top of each graph. Different letters indicate statistically significant differences (two-sided Wilcoxon rank-sum test with Bonferroni correction, p < 0.05; exact p values and test statistic are provided in Source data). e Direct visualization of flagellar filaments in the flgE swapping mutants. Top: Fluorescent image in Q-1D. The edge of the narrow passages is represented by dashed lines. The arrows indicate the direction of movement of the cell. Bottom: Fraction of flagellar filament morphology in growth medium and Q-1D. The color codes of bars are the same as in Fig. 3f. f In vivo competition assay. Infection competitiveness of C. insecticola with FlgE_Ci against C. insecticola with FlgE_Ba in the gut symbiotic organ of R. pedestris. The competitive index (CI) was calculated by (output C. insecticola with FlgE_Ba colony count/input C. insecticola with FlgE_Ba colony count)/(output C. insecticola with FlgE_Ci colony count/input C. insecticola with FlgE_Ci colony count). CI represents the relative colonization success of C. insecticola strains in the gut symbiotic organ. A lower CI indicates that C. insecticola with FlgE_Ci outcompeted C. insecticola with FlgE_Ba. Two-sided one-sample Wilcoxon signed-rank tests (against CI = 1) revealed significant differences from CI = 1 at 48, 72, 96, and 120 h (V = 0; p = 0.014, p = 0.008, 0.013, and p = 0.010, respectively). Source data are provided with this paper.