Xiao-Ling Wang · Qing-Ping Sun Department of Mechanical Engineering,University of Science and Technology Beijing,100083 Beijing,China.Department of Mechanical Engineering,The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology,Hong Kong,China
Abstract:
Bacterial flagellar filaments can undergo a polymorphic phase transition in both vitro and vivo environments.Each bacterial flagellar filament has 12 different helical forms which are macroscopically represented by different pitch lengths and helix radii.For external mechanical force induced filament phase transitions,there is so far only one experiment performed by Hotani in 1982,who showed a very beautiful cyclic phase transition phenomenon in his experiment on isolated flagellar filaments.In the present ...