Motility in Archaea- the Archaellum
Archaea use a unique structure for swimming motility which is not hoomologous to bacterial flagella, but instead resembles type IV pili. But in contrast to type IV pili, motion is not achieved by elongation and disassembly of the filament, but by rotation. The smallest known archaellum operon is present in Sulfolobus acidocaldarius. Therefore we used the S. acidoalcarius archaellum as a model system to understand which role the different proteins play during assembly and rot