Most bacteria have flagella; they are threadlike appendages extending from the surface of many microbes. They help move the organism around, a function called motility, in a rotating motion. Enabling ...

New studies from Arizona State University reveal surprising ways bacteria can move without their flagella—the slender, whip-like propellers that usually drive them forward. Movement lets bacteria form ...

SOME cilia and flagella beat in a complex three-dimensional manner, and, in addition, the angular velocity at the tip is greater than at the base. Presumably the bundle of fibrils which make up a ...

For the first half of the twentieth century, the sensory cilium, which is a non-motile projection that most mammalian cells possess, was thought to be a functionless vestigial structure. A series of ...

It has been long been known that bacteria swim by rotating their tail-like structure called the flagellum. (See the swimming bacteria in the figure.) The rotating motion of the flagellum is powered by ...

A microscopic speck of green algae can trot like a horse. Or gallop. Biophysicist Kirsty Wan compares the gaits of creatures large and small. Moving diagonally opposite limbs, or flagella in this case ...

THREE years before his death in 1805, English philosopher William Paley proposed a now-famous thought experiment. Imagine discovering a watch on the heath: how would you explain its intricate ...

A tiny but powerful engine that propels the bacterium Bacillus subtilis through liquids is disengaged from the corkscrew-like flagellum by a protein clutch, scientists have learned. Scientists have ...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- A tiny but powerful engine that propels the bacterium Bacillus subtilis through liquids is disengaged from the corkscrew-like flagellum by a protein clutch, Indiana University ...