National Center for Design of
Biomimetic Nanoconductors

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Chemotactic Pathway

Snapshot from a simulation of a portion of the chemotactic pathway in a pill-shaped E. Coli bacterium. Phosphorylated CheY proteins (red particles) are produced by the array of membrane receptors at the left end of the cell and diffuse thru the cytoplasm. If they arrive at flagellar attachment sites before being de-phosphorylated by CheZ, they can bind to one of 34 receptors at the base of each motor to alter the polarity of its rotation and thus the swimming strategy of the cell. A zoom-in on the flagellar base is shown at the right with a fraction of the receptors bound to CheY. The details of the diffusion/reaction model are from Lipkow, Andrews, and Bray, J Bacteriology, 187, 45-53 (2005). This simulation was performed with ChemCell, a particle-based protein network simulator (www.cs.sandia.gov/~sjplimp/cell.html).

The National Center for Design of Biomimetic Nanoconductors is funded by Grant Number PHS 2 PN2 EY016570B from the National Institutes of Health through the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research and is based at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Partner institutions include Yale University, University of Southern California, University of Chicago, Illinois Institute of Technology, Sandia National Laboratories, Argonne National Laboratory, Oxford University, Wabash College, University of California, Davis, nanoHUB at Purdue University, and the University of New Mexico.