Fumarate modulates bacterial flagellar rotation by lowering the free energy difference between the clockwise and counterclockwise states of the motor

Switching flagellar rotation from one direction to another is an essential part of bacterial chemotaxis. Fumarate has been shown to possess the capacity to restore to flagella of cytoplasm-free, CheY-containing bacterial envelopes the ability to switch directions and to increase the probability of reversal in intact cells. Neither the target of fumarate action nor the mechanism of function is known. To distinguish between the two potential targets of fumarate, the response regulator CheY and the flagellar switch-motor complex, we compared flagellar rotation between isogenic strains that lacked CheY and had either low or high levels of fumarate. The difference in the fumarate levels was due to a deletion of the genes encoding the enzymes that synthesize and metabolize fumarate; succinate dehydrogenase and fumarase, respectively. The strains were in a gutted background (i.e. a background deleted for the cytoplasmic chemotaxis proteins and some of the receptors), and switching was achieved by carrying out the measurements at 2.5°C, where it has been demonstrated that gutted cells switch spontaneously. The flagellar rotation of the strain with the highest level of fumarate was the most clockwise-biased and had the highest reversal frequency, indicating that fumarate is effective even in the absence of CheY. Fumarate reduced the free energy difference of the counterclockwise-to-clockwise transition and had no appreciable effect on the activation energy of this transition. Similar observations were made at room temperature, provided that intracellular CheY was present. In a wild-type background, both mutants made rings on semisolid agar typical of normal chemotaxis. Taken together, the results suggest that the target of fumarate is the switch-motor complex, that fumarate acts by increasing the probability of the clockwise state, and that a fumarate level as low as that found in succinate dehydrogenase mutants is sufficient for normal chemotaxis.