Mycoplasma mobile is one of the fastest gliding bacteria, gliding with a speed of 4.5 μm s-1. This gliding motility is driven by a concerted movement of 450 supramolecular motor units composed of three proteins, Gli123, Gli349, and Gli521, in the gliding motility machinery. With general experimental setups, it is difficult to obtain the information on how each motor unit works. This chapter describes strategies to decrease the number of active motor units to extract stepwise cell movements driven by a minimum number of motor units. We also describe an unforeseen motility mode in which the leg motions convert the gliding motion into rotary motion, which enables us to characterize the motor torque and energy-conversion efficiency by adding some more assumptions.
Keywords: Bacteria; Gliding; Motility; Mycoplasma mobile; Optical microscope; Rotation; Sialyllactose; Single-molecular techniques; Stepwise movement.
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