User:SpaghettiPunch/sandbox

Original - Gliding Motility

Gliding motility is a form of actin-based motility in apicomplexans and diatoms that uses a large complex of proteins to link force generation by an internal actomyosin network to an external substrate. Other studies have shown more detail in this mechanism in the apicomplexa.

Edit - Gliding Motility

Gliding motility is a type of flagella-independent translocation that allows the microorganism to, without the aid of propulsive organelles on the outer membrane, glide smoothly along the surface. Gliding motility and twitching motility both allow microorganisms to travel along the surface of low aqueous films, but while gliding motility is smooth, twitching motility is jerky and uses the pili as its mechanism of transport. Motor proteins found within the inner membrane of the bacteria utilize a proton-conducting channel to transduce a mechanical force to the cell surface. The movement of the cytoskeletal filaments causes a mechanical force which travels to the adhesion complexes on the substrate to move the cell forward. Motor and regulatory proteins that convert intracellular motion into mechanical forces like traction force have been discovered to be a conserved class of intracellular motors in bacteria that have been adapted to produce cell motility. The speed of the gliding varies from organism to organism and the reversal of direction is seemingly regulated by an internal clock of some sort. Gliding motility is not unique only to bacteria since it can also be seen being utilized by the Apicomplexa, a Eukaryota parasite, travelling at fast rates between 1-10μm a second when the Myxococcus xanthus glide at a rate of 5μm a minute. Cell invasion and gliding motility have TRAP(thrombospondin-related anonymous protein), a surface protein, as a common molecular basis that is both essential for infection and locomotion of the invasive Apicomplexa parasite.