identifier: traitmech:000732
label: bacterial polar flagellar ejection
definition: A physiological phenotype in which a bacterium actively ejects previously
  assembled axial structures of a polar flagellum by separation at its base.
definition_source: DOI:10.1371/journal.pbio.3000165
trait_category: PHYSIOLOGY
term_kind: CLASS
mapping_status: PROPOSED
parent_traits:
- METPO:1000059
evidence:
- reference: DOI:10.1371/journal.pbio.3000165
  snippet: Plesiomonas cells consistently lose their flagella at the base of the hook
  notes: Ferreira et al. 2019, PMID:30889173, PMC6424402. Results, Shed hook-filament
    structures accumulate in P. shigelloides supernatant, sole paragraph (HTML anchor
    article1.body1.sec2.sec4.p1; PDF pp. 4-5); Figure 1G. Direct publisher full-text
    match; native NOT_IN_ABSTRACT. Hook-bearing released structures, population counts
    and relic/assembly comparisons support ejection rather than daughter-cell dilution
    or passive midfilament breakage. Nutrient-depletion conditions vary among assays;
    minimal medium containing glucose is not complete carbon starvation. All 25 main
    PDF pages and six figures were inspected, not raw supplementary data. Energy conservation
    and leakage prevention are interpretations.
- reference: DOI:10.1111/mmi.14511
  snippet: bacteria can actively abandon flagella after prolonged stationary culturing
  notes: Zhuang et al. 2020, PMID:32259388, scientific abstract, sentence beginning
    Interestingly. Direct MED/publisher match and native VERIFIED. Main publisher
    text and six figure captions were subsequently read, not the actual figures or
    supplement. Sections 2.4-2.7 separate daughter-cell dilution from stationary-phase
    shedding. OD times flagellated fraction is a population proxy, not a direct cell
    count. VIO5 and engineered EGFP-FliG strain NMB344 are distinct; red/green panels
    in Figure 3 are not the same cells. Two-color experiments in Figures 5-6 support
    basal release, but rod breakage is inferred, not a directly imaged cut. Surface
    immobilization and medium exchanges constrain the assay.
- reference: DOI:10.1038/s41467-026-75593-6
  snippet: Nutrient depletion significantly increases the frequency of flagellar shedding
    and the accumulation of closed FOMCs
  notes: Guo et al. 2026, PMID:42660870, PMC13521929.1, Results, Two distinct in situ
    architectures of the flagellar motor in V. cholerae, and Supplementary Figure
    4. Direct JATS match; native NOT_IN_ABSTRACT. FOMC denotes the flagellar outer
    membrane complex. The quoted experiment uses wild-type V. cholerae; delta-flhG
    structural samples are distinct. All 12 main PDF pages and six main figures were
    inspected, plus the actual supplementary Figure 4 and supplementary tables. Its
    81/273 observations are cells in the figure caption and tomograms in Methods/Table
    4, not biological replicates or ejection rates. The main-text Table 3 pointer
    instead corresponds to Table 4. Other supplements remain incompletely read.
discussions:
- discussion_id: bacterial-polar-flagellar-ejection-scope
  prompt: Review active basal release separately from possession, loss and resorption.
  kind: CURATION_TODO
  status: OPEN
  rationale: This qualified phenotype requires active basal release of previously
    assembled polar flagellar axial structures. Hook-filament release is an observed
    endpoint, not a universal component-completeness requirement. Flagellar possession
    or arrangement, assembly failure, motor arrest, reduced motility, a decreasing
    flagellated fraction or passive filament breakage alone do not establish it. Periplasmic
    resorption and microbial-eukaryotic axonemal autotomy are distinct. Phenotype
    METPO:1000059 is a definition-based parent inference; locomotory possession is
    not a required parent. The definition does not require every flagellum to be lost,
    nonmotility, a particular stimulus, exact severing site, relic morphology or universal
    behavior among polar-flagellated bacteria. No bare shedding or deflagellation
    exact synonym is asserted.
  posed_by: codex
  posed_date: '2026-10-15'
- discussion_id: bacterial-polar-flagellar-ejection-metpo
  prompt: Review the phenotype hierarchy without reviving retired flagellar identifiers.
  kind: CURATION_TODO
  status: OPEN
  rationale: Pinned and current METPO release annotations distinguish motility, locomotory
    flagellar possession and polar arrangement from ejection. Historical METPO:0000089
    and METPO:000090 are deprecated with OMO:0001000; METPO:1000381 is deprecated
    with IAO:0000226. Their replacement METPO:1000704 denotes possession, not shedding.
    Deprecated flagellum METPO:1000123 has OMO:0001000 and no observed replacement
    or consider annotation. These are not exact mappings and are not reactivated.
    The current editor is an import stub, not a full release. The ontology pin remains
    unchanged. Proposal v608 reserves METPO:1068500 within 1068500-1068599; the local
    identifier is traitmech:000732. No upstream release or human sign-off is implied.
  posed_by: codex
  posed_date: '2026-10-15'
- discussion_id: bacterial-polar-flagellar-ejection-mechanism
  prompt: Keep organismal ejection separate from universal molecular and sequence
    claims.
  kind: KNOWLEDGE_GAP
  status: OPEN
  rationale: The 2026 structures assign closure to FlgI conformational changes in
    V. cholerae; the 2019 interpretation of an unidentified added plug is not imposed
    as a universal mechanism. Assembly defects in gate-deletion mutants do not by
    themselves demonstrate failure of ejection. Cryo-ET states are not a longitudinal
    trajectory of the same motor. A protein-resolved causal graph needs taxon-paired
    authority-checked accessions and edge-specific evidence. Gene, motif and domain
    presence alone do not establish this organism-level phenotype. Mechanisms are
    deferred, not claimed absent.
  posed_by: codex
  posed_date: '2026-10-15'
- discussion_id: bacterial-polar-flagellar-ejection-provenance
  prompt: Resolve assay-specific strain provenance before asserting canonical taxa.
  kind: KNOWLEDGE_GAP
  status: OPEN
  rationale: Source organism names remain qualified observations, not independently
    resolved canonical taxon assertions. Engineered structural samples and source-designated
    wild-type nutrient assays must not be conflated. MED metadata and accessible publisher
    text were checked; unavailable publisher or PubMed pages are access limits, not
    evidence that no notice exists. This is not comprehensive correction/retraction
    clearance, raw-data reanalysis, independent replication, paid research or human
    sign-off.
  posed_by: codex
  posed_date: '2026-10-15'
curation_history:
- timestamp: '2026-10-15T11:39:29Z'
  curator: codex
  action: MINTED_TRAITMECH_ID
  changes: Added active basal release of assembled bacterial polar flagellar structures
    with three primary DOI sources and directly checked 12/9/15-word snippets. Native
    NOT_IN_ABSTRACT/VERIFIED/NOT_IN_ABSTRACT remain distinct from direct full-text
    checks. Reserved 000732, v608 and 1068500-1068599 after ignored/hidden current-file,
    retained-history, complete-range and open/draft PR checks, including the changed
    CommunityMech PR2018 worktree. No obsolete identifier, exact mapping, canonical
    taxon or universal molecular mechanism is inferred. Timestamp records observed
    acceptance, not source acquisition.
  llm_assisted: true
- timestamp: '2026-10-15T13:07:41Z'
  curator: codex
  action: CORRECT_EVIDENCE_LOCATOR
  changes: 'Corrected the Ferreira 2019 third-paragraph locator to the sole subsection
    paragraph, HTML anchor article1.body1.sec2.sec4.p1, spanning PDF pages 4-5. Preserved
    the verbatim excerpt, native NOT_IN_ABSTRACT outcome, biological claims and prior
    history. Source HTML and PDF pages were rechecked for issue #1947.'
  llm_assisted: true