[Mechanism of bacterial gliding motility]

Abstract

Bacteria have various way to move over solid surfaces, such as glass, agar, and host cell. These movements involve surface appendages including flagella, type IV pili and other "mysterious" nano-machineries. Gliding motility was a term used various surface movements by several mechanisms that have not been well understood in past few decades. However, development of visualization techniques allowed us to make much progress on their dynamics of machineries. It also provided us better understanding how bacteria move over surfaces and why bacteria move in natural environments. In this review, I will introduce recent studies on the gliding motility of Flavobacteium and Mycoplasma based on the detail observation of single cell and its motility machinery with micro-nano scales.