Mechanical Force-Based Regulation of Protein Assemblies

                                             Mechanical force-based regulation of protein assemblies

 

Ravi Chawla, Katie M. Ford, Pushkar P. Lele*

Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering

Texas A&M University, College Station, TX-77843

*Corresponding author: plele@tamu.edu

The bacterial flagellar motor undergoes structural changes in order to adapt to long-lived perturbations in the cell’s thermal, chemical, electrical and mechanical environments. Remodeling of motor-assemblies improves the chances of survival. For example, the remodeling of the motor-switch extends the range of signal detection and enhances the ability to respond to chemical signals during chemotaxis.

The stator-complex that rotates the motor is responsible for surface sensing and remodels in response to perturbations in viscous loads [1]. The stator builds itself by recruiting additional stator units under high loads; however the mechanism for such load-dependent self-assembly is currently unknown. Here, we tested a hypothesis that the amount of force generated by each stator-unit modulates its association with the rotor. To do this, we measured stator-binding in mutants strains in which the motors reportedly develop lower torque compared to wild-type motors. Our measurements indicated that the stator retains at best one stator-unit when delivering a low force to the rotor. On the other hand, when delivering a higher force the stator retains as many as eleven stator-units. An analytical model was developed that incorporated an exponential dependence of the off-rate for individual units on the force delivered to the rotor. The model provided accurate fits to measurements of stator-rotor binding over a range of loads. It is possible that the tensile forces that develop when a stator-unit delivers a high torque uncover cryptic binding sites that stabilize the stator-rotor association.  Our experimental and modeling results represent the first steps towards establishing a plausible mechanism for mechanical force-based regulation of the flagellar stator.

[1] Lele et al., Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 110 (29), 11839-11844, 2013.

[2] Chawla et al., Sci Rep, under review.