Straight and rigid flagellar hook made by insertion of the FlgG specific sequence into FlgE

Abstract

The bacterial flagellar hook connects the helical flagellar filament to the rotary motor at its base. Bending flexibility of the hook allows the helical filaments to form a bundle behind the cell body to produce thrust for bacterial motility. The hook protein FlgE shows considerable sequence and structural similarities to the distal rod protein FlgG; however, the hook is supercoiled and flexible as a universal joint whereas the rod is straight and rigid as a drive shaft. A short FlgG specific sequence (GSS) has been postulated to confer the rigidity on the FlgG rod, and insertion of GSS at the position between Phe-42 and Ala-43 of FlgE actually made the hook straight. However, it remains unclear whether inserted GSS confers the rigidity as well. Here, we provide evidence that insertion of GSS makes the hook much more rigid. The GSS insertion inhibited flagellar bundle formation behind the cell body, thereby reducing motility. This indicates that the GSS insertion markedly reduced the bending flexibility of the hook. Therefore, we propose that the inserted GSS makes axial packing interactions of FlgE subunits much tighter in the hook to suppress axial compression and extension of the protofilaments required for bending flexibility.