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Variable Symmetry in Salmonella typhimurium Flagellar Motors

Howard S. Young, Hongyue Dang^*, Yimin Lai^*, David J. DeRosier and Shahid Khan^*

^* Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, New York 13210; Structural Biology Program, Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine, New York University School of Medicine, New York, New York 10016; and W. M. Keck Institute for Cellular Visualization, Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center and the Department of Biology, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts 02454

Correspondence: Address reprint requests to Shahid Khan, SUNY Upstate Medical University, 750 E. Adams Street, Syracuse, NY 13210. Tel.: 315-464-8729; Fax: 315-464-8750; E-mail: khansm{at}mail.upstate.edu.

Electron cryomicroscopy of rotor complexes of the Salmonella typhimurium flagellar motor, overproduced in a nonmotile Escherichia coli host, has revealed a variation in subunit symmetry of the cytoplasmic ring (C ring) module. C rings with subunit symmetries ranging from 31 to 38 were found. They formed a Gaussian distribution around a mean between 34 and 35, a similar number to that determined for native C rings. C-ring diameter scaled with the number of subunits, indicating that the elliptical-shaped subunits maintained constant intersubunit spacing. Taken together with evidence that the M ring does not correspondingly increase in size, this finding indicates that rotor assembly does not require strict stoichiometric interactions between the M- and C-ring subunits. Implications for motor function are discussed.

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