The DOI matches its Crossref record; 25 of the 25 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Single pilus motor forces exceed 100 pN
Open accessAbstract
Force production by type IV pilus retraction is critical for infectivity of Neisseria gonorrhoeae and DNA transfer. We investigated the roles of pilus number and the retraction motor, PilT, in force generation in vivo at the single-molecule level and found that individual retraction events are generated by a single pilus fiber, and only one PilT complex powers retraction. Retraction velocity is constant at low forces but decreases at forces greater than 40 pN, giving a remarkably high average stall force of 110 ± 30 pN. Further insights into the molecular mechanism of force generation are gained from the effect of ATP-depletion, which reduces the rate of retraction but not the stall force. Energetic considerations suggest that more than one ATP is involved in the removal of a single pilin subunit from a pilus. The results are most consistent with a model in which the ATPase PilT forms an oligomer that disassembles the pilus by a cooperative conformational change.
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Cites
Calcium's Role in Mechanotransduction during Muscle Development
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Self-citationThe bacteriophage φ29 portal motor can package DNA against a large internal force
Smith, D. E., Tans, S. J., Smith, S. B., Grimes, S., Anderson, D. L., & Bustamante, C. (2001) · Nature · doi:10.1038/35099581 · Cited by 1,032
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A component of innate immunity prevents bacterial biofilm development
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Force and Velocity Measured for Single Molecules of RNA Polymerase
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Self-citationDirect observation of extension and retraction of type IV pili
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Cited by
Chen, C.-J., Tobiason, D. M., Thomas, C. E., Shafer, W. M., Seifert, H. S., & Sparling, P. F. (2004) · Journal of Bacteriology · doi:10.1128/jb.186.3.730-739.2004 · Cited by 48
Self-citationGrossman, A. S., Lei, L., Botting, J. M., Liu, J., Nahar, N., Liu, J., McLean, J. S., He, X., & Bor, B. (2025) · The ISME Journal · doi:10.1093/ismejo/wraf119 · Cited by 14
In situ architecture of the Tad pilus machine in Caulobacter crescentus
Iarocci, J., Whitfield, G. B., Williston, R. F., Wozny, M. R., Basu, K., Presley, J. F., Ellison, C. K., Brun, Y. V., & Guo, S. (2026) · mBio · doi:10.1128/mbio.00111-26 · Cited by 3
Metadata
- Authors
- Maier, B., Potter, L., So, M., Seifert, H. S., & Sheetz, M. P.
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2002-11-22
- Volume
- 99
- Issue
- 25
- Pages
- 16012-16017
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- OpenAlex
- W2167084558
- Cited by
- 396
- References
- 25
- FWCI
- 3.89
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
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- Maier, B., Potter, L., So, M., Seifert, H. S., & Sheetz, M. P. (2002). Single pilus motor forces exceed 100 pN. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.242523299
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
