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Scientists finally cracked how bacteria’s spinning motor actually works

Ellsworth Toohey
Apr 28, 2026
∙ Paid

NatalieIme/shutterstock.com

Mike Manson has spent 50 years at Texas A&M studying the bacterial flagellar motor — a molecular machine that spins hundreds of times per second, outpacing a race car’s spinning crankshaft, to drive bacteria through water. He finally understands it. “My lifelong quest is now fulfilled,” he told Quanta Magazine. “I finally unde…

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