The aquatic bacterium Caulobacter crescentus cancome, quite literally, to a sticky end. As Peter H. Tsang and colleagues report (Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 103, 5764–5768; 2006), the bacterium’s long, tail-like anchor sticks it so tightly to a supporting surface that it often tears apart when a detaching force is applied, rather than relinquishing its grip. The adhesion is thought to be the strongest of biological origin yet discovered......The holdfast enables the bacterium to remain stuck to the surface even in strong jets of water, and Tsang et al. calculate that, were it to cover an area of 1 cm 2 , it could support a weight of 680 kg, even on a wet surface. - NATURE|Vol 440|27 April 2006
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper.
Movie of experiment (in mpg)
Nature
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006PNAS..103.5764T
Coverages in
BBC
NPR
Fox News
CBC
MSNBC
ABC news
BBC
Hong Kong newspapers
some references:
http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/esthag/2000/34/i16/abs/es9913176.html
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T30-3YJ9XDS-C&_coverDate=03%2F31%2F2000&_alid=422022017&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_qd=1&_cdi=4932&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=77152d2a63d04fefc3500a7a8c253b34
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/96/2/471?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=1&andorexacttitle=and&andorexacttitleabs=and&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&volume=96&firstpage=471&resourcetype=HWCIT
http://jcs.biologists.org/cgi/reprint/87/4/519
http://dev.biologists.org/cgi/reprint/126/23/5431
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v334/n6177/abs/334074a0.html;jsessionid=D756E38F2D589CBC0965BA391AC4B280
http://www.biophysj.org/cgi/reprint/75/3/1553
http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1281249&blobtype=pdf
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v397/n6714/abs/397050a0_fs.html
http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1233775&blobtype=pdf
Printer-friendly version
Send to friend
