Seven Flagellar Motors in One

Psalm 141:1
"LORD, I cry unto thee: make haste unto me; give ear unto my voice, when I cry unto thee."

Try as they might, evolutionists are powerless to account for the microscopic rotary motor that propels bacteria through fluid just like a powerboat skims along the surface of a lake. But if the bacterium's flagellar motor troubles evolutionists, they must really be puzzled by the fast-moving MO-1 bacterium. After all, its hair-like flagellum isn't powered by just one motor. It uses seven motors all hooked up in parallel!

If the MO-1 bacterium were the size of a small speedboat, its proportional speed would be ten times the speed of sound. You'll need a microscope to actually see one. The bacterium measures only about 225 nanometres wide, so you'd need forty-four of them side by side to amount to the width of a single grain of talcum powder.

According to a team of researchers working in France and Japan, the flagellar apparatus of marine bacterium MO-1 is a tight bundle of seven flagellar filaments enveloped in a sheath. The motors are arranged in an intertwined hexagonal array similar to the thick and thin filaments of vertebrate skeletal muscles. There are also twenty-four fibrils in the sheath that are thought to counter-rotate between the flagella to minimize the friction of high-speed rotation.

From the Scriptures we see that God moves quickly when we call upon Him in prayer. God is never far from us, of course. But He is never nearer than when we draw near to Him in prayer.

Notes: "Architecture of a flagellar apparatus in the fast-swimming magnetotactic bacterium MO-1," PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), Ruan et al, www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1215274109. "The Multiple flagellar Motor, evidence of evolution, or design?" 8-2-14, elshamah.heavenforum.org/t1850-multiple-flagellar-motors#3091.
Diagram: Representation of the seven motors and counter-rotating fibrils inside the sheath of the MO-1 bacterium. Used for educational purposes under U.S. fair use doctrine.
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