Dynamism and regulation of the stator, the energy conversion complex of the bacterial flagellar motor

Many motile bacteria swim by rotating their motility organ, the flagellum. Rotation of the flagellum is driven by a motor at its base, and torque is generated by the rotor-stator interaction coupled with the specific ion flow through the channel in the stator. Because the stator works as an energy-conversion complex in the motor, understanding the functional mechanism of the stator is critically important. But its characterization has been hampered due to the difficulty in isolating the functional stator complex from the membrane. Recently, successful new approaches for studying the stator have been reported that reveal its novel properties. Two of those, visualization of the in vivo behavior of stator units using fluorescently tagged proteins and structure-guided functional analyses of the soluble region in the stator, are summarized in this short review.