A trio of researchers at Kiel University in Germany has discovered how the male thistle tortoise beetle manages to penetrate the coiled duct inside the female reproductive organ without buckling his ...

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 ...

Many species of swimming bacteria have a rotary structure called a "flagellum," consisting of more than twenty different kinds of proteins. By rotating their flagellar filaments and gaining propulsion ...

One essential component of each eukaryotic cell is the cytoskeleton. Microtubules, tiny tubes consisting of a protein called tubulin, are part of this skeleton of cells. Cilia and flagella, which are ...

Scientists have studied a new target for antibiotics in the greatest detail yet—in the fight against antibiotic resistance. The "molecular machine" flagellum is essential for bacteria to cause ...

Scientists have studied a new target for antibiotics in the greatest detail yet – in the fight against antibiotic resistance. The ‘molecular machine’ flagellum is essential for bacteria to cause ...

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 ...

Prokaryotic cells have evolved numerous machineries to swim through liquid or crawl over surfaces. Perhaps the most common of these are the well-studied bacterial flagella and the unrelated archaeal ...

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 ...