Try as they might, evolutionists are powerless to account for the microscopic rotary motor that propels bacteria through fluid just like a powerboat skims along the surface of a lake. But if the bacterium's flagellar motor troubles evolutionists, they must really be puzzled by the fast-moving MO-1 bacterium. After all, its hair-like flagellum isn't powered by just one motor. It uses seven motors all hooked up in parallel!
If the MO-1 bacterium were the size of a small speedboat, its proportional speed would be ten times the speed of sound. You'll need a microscope to actually see one. The bacterium measures only about 225 nanometres wide, so you'd need forty-four of them side by side to amount to the width of a single grain of talcum powder.
According to a team of researchers working in France and Japan, the flagellar apparatus of marine bacterium MO-1 is a tight bundle of seven flagellar filaments enveloped in a sheath. The motors are arranged in an intertwined hexagonal array similar to the thick and thin filaments of vertebrate skeletal muscles. There are also twenty-four fibrils in the sheath that are thought to counter-rotate between the flagella to minimize the friction of high-speed rotation.
Seven Flagellar Motors in One
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
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