The bacterial flagellum is a self-assembling macromolecular machine anchored in the bacterial membrane that allows bacteria to move through liquid environments or crawl along surfaces (Macnab 1992). Flagellar assembly and function is a complex process, which in Salmonella typhimurium involves over 60 genes (Frye et al. 2006). The construction of individual flagella requires an ordered assembly pathway (Macnab 1992). The assembly process involves the secretion of individual subunits through the hollow core of the growing flagellum where they assemble at the tip of the structure. In addition, multi-flagellated bacteria can have individual flagella in the same cell at different stages of assembly (Bardy et al. 2003). Consequently, the assembly process is tightly regulated at the levels of substrate selection by the associated secretion apparatus and coupled gene regulation. This paper reports an unexpected discovery related to the current understanding of how a cell regulates flagellar gene expression in response to intermediate stages of flagellar assembly. A flagellar-specific transcription factor, 28, plays a dual role as both a regulator of gene expression and a facilitator of flagellar-specific Type III secretion.The bacterial flagellum consists of three major substructures: (1) the basal body, which acts as motor anchoring the flagellum within the cell membranes; (2) the hook, which acts as a flexible, universal joint between the basal body; and (3) the long external filament, which acts as a propeller when rotated (Berg and Anderson 1973;Macnab 1999). Self-assembly of a flagellum begins at the inner membrane and proceeds out of the cell with construction of the basal structure. A flagellar-specific Type III secretion (T3S) apparatus is assembled within the cytoplasmic membrane at the base of the basal structure (Aldridge and Hughes 2002). Individual structural subunits are then secreted from the cytoplasm into the growing flagellum by the flagellar T3S system. Efficient flagellar assembly requires that the T3S apparatus distinguish between different secretion substrates at different stages of assembly. Recent studies have shown that there is a multi-layered regulatory network in place that couples temporal expression and delivery of flagellar

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We formulate gaussian and circular random-matrix models representing a coupled system consisting of an absorbing and an amplifying resonator, which are mutually related by a generalized time-reversal symmetry. Motivated by optical realizations of such systems we consider a PT or a PT T ′ time-reversal symmetry, which impose different constraints on magneto-optical effects, and then focus on five common settings. For each of these, we determine the eigenvalue distribution in the complex plane in the short-wavelength limit, which reveals that the fraction of real eigenvalues among all eigenvalues in the spectrum vanishes if all classical scales are kept fixed. Numerically, we find that the transition from real to complex eigenvalues in the various ensembles display a different dependence on the coupling strength between the two resonators. These differences can be linked to the level spacing statistics in the hermitian limit of the considered models.

The assembly of the bacterial flagellum is exquisitely controlled. Flagellar biosynthesis is underpinned by a specialized type III secretion system that allows export of proteins from the cytoplasm to the nascent structure. Bacillus subtilis regulates flagellar assembly using both conserved and species-specific mechanisms. Here, we show that YvyG is essential for flagellar filament assembly. We define YvyG as an orthologue of the Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium type III secretion system chaperone, FlgN, which is required for the export of the hook-filament junction proteins, FlgK and FlgL. Deletion of flgN (yvyG) results in a nonmotile phenotype that is attributable to a decrease in hag translation and a complete lack of filament polymerization. Analyses indicate that a flgK-flgL double mutant strain phenocopies deletion of flgN and that overexpression of flgK-flgL cannot complement the motility defect of a ΔflgN strain. Furthermore, in contrast to previous work suggesting that phosphorylation of FlgN alters its subcellular localization, we show that mutation of the identified tyrosine and arginine FlgN phosphorylation sites has no effect on motility. These data emphasize that flagellar biosynthesis is differentially regulated in B. subtilis from classically studied Gram-negative flagellar systems and questions the biological relevance of some posttranslational modifications identified by global proteomic approaches.

This chapter investigates the evaluation of data visualizations using observational research in an award-winning design studio. It outlines some professional and commercial forces that are involved in the shaping of evaluative strategies and identifies differences in methods and forms of evaluation in projects with different aims and intended audiences. The research showed that alongside quantitative headline figures of consumption, such as audience reach and interaction, qualitative measures of audience experience—which consider the sociocultural context of consumption—were sometimes included in evaluation strategies, but this varied between projects depending on the level of access to, and knowledge about, the audience. This chapter highlights the importance of such measures, outlines attempts to develop them, and comments on the potential to do so.