Abstract/Summary

The chemotaxis pathway of Escherichia coli is one of the best studied and modelled biological signalling pathways. Here we extend existing modelling approaches by explicitly including a description of the formation and subcellular localization of intermediary complexes in the phosphotransfer pathway. The inclusion of these complexes shows that only about 60% of the total output response regulator (CheY) is uncomplexed at any moment and hence free to interact with its target, the flagellar motor. A clear strength of this model is its ability to predict the experimentally observable subcellular localization of CheY throughout a chemotactic response. We have found good agreement between the model output and experimentally determined CheY localization patterns. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.