Vidhu Soman

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Application Specialist at DSS Imagetech

About 50 years ago, Howard Berg had proposed a ‘rotary motor’ explanatory paradigm for the flagella-assisted motility of bacteria (Berg & Anderson, Nature, 1973), claiming that dispersion of the proton motive force (or pmf, for which Peter Mitchell received the Nobel Prize in 1978) provided the powering in such propulsion (Berg, Annual Review of Bi...

Bacterial flagellar system (BFS) was the primary example of a purported ‘rotary-motor’ functionality in a natural assembly. This mandates the translation of a circular motion of components inside into a linear displacement of the cell body outside, which is supposedly orchestrated with the following features of the BFS: (i) A chemical/electrical di...

Bacterial flagellar system (BFS) was the first perceived example of a ‘natural rotary-motor” functionality, mandating the translation of a circular motion of components inside into a linear displacement of the cell body outside. This outcome is supposedly orchestrated with the following features of the BFS: (i) A chemical/electrical differential ge...

Many species of bacteria use flagella to navigate in its environment. The flagellum is a 7-10 μm long helical filament with a rotary motor at its base embedded in the cell membrane and almost a dozen stator complexes. Proton motive force across the cell membrane powers the flagellar motors of E . coli and Salmonella . The motor stochastically switc...

The bacterial flagellum has a rotary motor embedded in its membrane. The motor consists of dynamic stators, and a rotor. Torque is thought to be generated by electro-steric interactions between rotor and stator. Chemotactic signals entail the motor to switch its direction of rotation. However, other factors such as protonmotive force and torque are...

The inefficiency of cyanide/HCN (CN) binding with heme proteins (under physiological regimes) is demonstrated with an assessment of thermodynamics, kinetics, and inhibition constants. The acute onset of toxicity and CN’s mg/Kg LD 50 (μM lethal concentration) suggests that the classical hemeFe binding-based inhibition rationale is untenable to accou...

Since mid-1970s, the proton-centric proposal of 'chemiosmosis' became the acclaimed explanation for aerobic respiration. Recently, significant theoretical and experimental evidence were presented for an oxygen-centric 'murburn' mechanism of mitochondrial ATP-synthesis. Herein, we compare the predictive capabilities of the two models with respect to...

The long-standing explanation for cellular respiration (mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation, mOxPhos) in textbooks is proton-centric and involves the elements of Rotary ATP synthesis, Chemiosmosis principle, Proton pumps and Electron transport chain (in short, the RCPE model). Addressing certain lacunae in the RCPE model, an alternative scheme...

Fumarate has previously been identified as a ‘switch factor’ that can alter the switching frequency and bias of the sense of rotation of the bacterial flagellar motor; however, despite numerous studies during the past fifty years, the molecular mechanism by which fumarate causes these effects could not be understood. We studied the motility of Salm...