The nut-and-bolt motion of a bacteriophage sliding along a bacterial flagellum: a complete hydrodynamics model

Abstract

The ‘nut-and-bolt’ mechanism of a bacteriophage-bacteria flagellum translocation motion is modelled by numerically integrating the 3D Stokes equations using a Finite-Element Method (FEM). Following the works by Katsamba and Lauga (Phys Rev Fluids 4(1): 013101, 2019), two mechanical models of the flagellum-phage complex are considered. In the first model, the phage fiber wraps around the smooth flagellum surface separated by some distance. In the second model, the phage fiber is partly immersed in the flagellum volume via a helical groove imprinted in the flagellum and replicating the fiber shape. In both cases, the results of the Stokes solution for the translocation speed are compared with the Resistive Force Theory (RFT) solutions (obtained in Katsamba and Lauga Phys Rev Fluids 4(1): 013101, 2019) and the asymptotic theory in a limiting case. The previous RFT solutions of the same mechanical models of the flagellum-phage complex showed opposite trends for how the phage translocation speed depends on the phage tail length. The current work uses complete hydrodynamics solutions, which are free from the RFT assumptions to understand the divergence of the two mechanical models of the same biological system. A parametric investigation is performed by changing pertinent geometrical parameters of the flagellum-phage complex and computing the resulting phage translocation speed. The FEM solutions are compared with the RFT results using insights provided from the velocity field visualisation in the fluid domain.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-36186-1
Divisions: College of Engineering & Physical Sciences > Systems analytics research institute (SARI)
College of Engineering & Physical Sciences
College of Engineering & Physical Sciences > School of Computer Science and Digital Technologies > Applied Mathematics & Data Science
College of Engineering & Physical Sciences > School of Computer Science and Digital Technologies
College of Engineering & Physical Sciences > Engineering for Health
Additional Information: Copyright © The Author(s) 2023. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Funding: The work of S.A.K. was partly supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant agreement no. 703526.
Publication ISSN: 2045-2322
Last Modified: 30 Sep 2024 13:26
Date Deposited: 06 Jun 2023 10:06
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: https://www.nat ... 598-023-36186-1 (Publisher URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2023-06-05
Published Online Date: 2023-06-05
Accepted Date: 2023-05-26
Submitted Date: 2023-01-20
Authors: Karabasov, Sergey A.
Zaitsev, Mihail A.
Nerukh, Dmitry A. (ORCID Profile 0000-0001-9005-9919)

Download

[img]

Version: Published Version

License: Creative Commons Attribution

| Preview

Export / Share Citation


Statistics

Additional statistics for this record