Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Gliding Motility Movie

This paper that appears in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has a neat movie of some Mycoplasma mobile gliding around. The cells are moving around by a form of 'gliding' motility by essentially protruding little protein spikes out at the top of the cell. These spikes are moved rather like a leg propelling the little bacteria onwards. IMO, microbes have really come up with some ingenious solutions to common problems and all with nothing more than a single cell.

(Note: movie is in quicktime format).