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

. 2007 Dec 28;3(12):e253. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.0030253

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

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Public Domain declaration which stipulates that, once placed in the public domain, this work may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Public Domain declaration, which stipulates that, once placed in the public domain, this work may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose.

PMC Copyright notice

Although the pilus length varies with extension, retraction, and breakage, most pili are on the order of one cell length [39]. Area I represents the pilus–cell interaction area. Its sides are taken as the average pilus length. If either the head or the tail of another cell falls within this area, it can be contacted by pili from the black cell. Area II is the corresponding interaction area for A motility. A bent gray cell in direct contact with a dark cell illustrates the bending and alignment due to collisions between cells. Slime trail following is illustrated by trails (light gray shaded area) inside of area II. An artificially low cell density has been used in this figure to clarify the several interactions. In reality, many cells are adjacent to each other within the interaction area.