Flagella

Dear Colleagues,

Flagella are complex and fascinating structures that allow bacteria to swim in liquid environments or to swarm on soft and moist surfaces.

To colonize hospitable environments, bacteria use chemotaxis, which is a strategy of reorientation that was first described in the peritrichously flagellated Escherichia coli; it is also known as the run–tumble motility strategy. When signaling pathways respond to stimuli, a transient reversal of the rotary direction of the flagellar motors is performed, leading to the reorientation of the cell body. With diversity among bacteria for the number, position, and shape of flagella, different modes of mobility, including flicking and wrapping, were found recently, and incentivize the analysis of the relationship between flagellar architecture and resulting motility patterns. Moreover, the synthesis and functioning of flagella are very expensive for bacteria; highly regulated gene expression by environmental conditions is observed and is an important area of research on flagella.

Flagella are also considered to be a critical virulence factor for pathogenic bacteria, with examples of host cell adhesion, entrance, and biofilm formation; studies in this area are essential to decipher the host–pathogen relationship. Finally, studies on the use of flagella as a vaccine adjuvant or as a target for vaccine in addition to studies about flagellotropic bacteriophages are important to evaluate particularly potent antibacterial therapies.

This Special Issue on bacterial flagella welcomes original results or reviews on all those various areas of basic and application-oriented research.

Dr. Jean-Christophe Marvaud
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Molecular Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. There is an Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal. For details about the APC please see here. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.