Swimming helps bacteria look for food, escape bad conditions and disperse their genes. But when a bacterium needs to stop swimming, it produces a free-floating clutch (a protein shown in red), that sits down on a gear-like ring (orange), moving that gear away from the engine that spins the bacterium's flagellum. By disengaging the engine from the flagellum's other moving parts, the flagellum's tail is no longer driven to spin.

Full story at:
http://nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=111737

Accolades:
“Zina, it’s beautiful, almost exactly how I imagined it. I like that you added the bacteria as well.”

--Daniel Kearns
Assistant Professor, Department of Biology
Indiana University

“Cheers and THANK you. Zina’s illustration is amazing. Love it. Of course, it’s the kind of quality one comes to expect from Bay Area-ites…”

--David Bricker
Public Information Officer
Indiana University

Also featured in:
EurekAlert
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-06/iu-mp061708.php