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Chemoreceptor Dynamics And Signaling: Nmr Measurements Within Functional Complexes, Maryam Kashefi

Doctoral Dissertations

Bacteria employ remarkable membrane-bound nanoarrays to sense their environment and direct their swimming. Arrays consist of chemotaxis receptor trimers of dimers that are bridged at their membrane-distal tips by rings of two cytoplasmic proteins, a kinase CheA and a coupling protein CheW. It is widely accepted that ligand binding to the receptor causes a 2 Å piston motion of a helix that extends through the periplasmic and transmembrane domains. However, it is not clear how the signal propagates 200 Å further to control activity of the kinase bound at the tip of the receptor. Dynamic changes within the cytoplasmic domain …