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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1995 Apr 11;92(8):3502–3506. doi: 10.1073/pnas.92.8.3502

Fluctuation analysis of rotational speeds of the bacterial flagellar motor.

A D Samuel 1, H C Berg 1
PMCID: PMC42195  PMID: 7724590

Abstract

We measured the dependence of the variance in the rotation rate of tethered cells of Escherichia coli on the mean rotation rate over a regime in which the motor generates constant torque. This dependence was compared with that of broken motors. In either case, motor torque was augmented with externally applied torque. We show that, in contrast to broken motors, functioning motors in this regime do not freely rotationally diffuse and that the variance measurements are consistent with the predicted values of a stepping mechanism with exponentially distributed waiting times (a Poisson stepper) that steps approximately 400 times per revolution.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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