Caption This video shows a pilus shoot out from the bacterial cell to latch onto a piece of DNA. The image on the right shows the bacteria and pilus in green and the DNA in red. The image on the ...

Pili: Hair-like structures on the surface of bacteria that facilitate adhesion to surfaces and other cells. Sortase: An enzyme that anchors surface proteins to the bacterial cell wall, playing a ...

And instead of the metabolic reactions occurring within cells, the bacteria ... of Massachusetts Amherst shows that pili—tiny filaments jutting out from bacteria—can be used to create wires ...

a motor that retracts the pilus and moves the cell. Unattached pili rarely retract, indicating that surface contact provides a signal for its motors to move. But the mechanism that activates the motor ...

L. Talà et al., “Pseudomonas aeruginosa orchestrates twitching motility by sequential control of type IV pili movements,” Nat Microbiol, 4:774–80, 2019. Bacteria use long, threadlike attachments known ...

Alternatively, cells can measure ... tiny size. "Bacteria then use this information to navigate across surfaces toward ...

Nanotube bridge networks grow between the most abundant photosynthetic bacteria in the oceans, suggesting that the world is ...

Whilst the ultimate outcome of the lytic cycle is production of new phage progeny and death of the host bacterial cell, this is a multistep process involving precise coordination of gene transcription ...

Bacteria exchange this DNA in all manner of ways. Pili, hair-like appendages that protrude from the surface, create bridges between cells. Free DNA floats around, just waiting to be scooped up.