type IV pilus

traitmech:000175 · CLASS · PROPOSED

A morphology trait in which a cell produces extracellular type-IV-pilin filaments that dynamically extend from and retract toward the cell surface.

Trait evidence (3)

DOI:10.1093/femsre/fuab053
Bacteria and archaea rely on appendages called type IV pili (T4P)

Ellison et al. review type IV pili as prokaryotic appendages that participate in diverse surface-associated behaviors.
DOI:10.1093/femsre/fuab053
T4P are broadly distributed fibers that dynamically extend and retract

The review supports the record definition's dynamic extension and retraction qualifier.
DOI:10.1042/BST20160221
Type IV pili are hair-like bacterial surface appendages

Piepenbrink and Sundberg support type IV pili as bacterial cell-surface appendages built from pilin proteins.

No kg-microbe node embedding matched this record in the 2026-04-25 deepwalk.

Organisms cited as exemplars of this trait. Taxon ids are NCBITaxon and link out to the NCBI record.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1 NCBITaxon:208964 DOI:10.1128/jb.00359-24 The PAO1 type IV pilus is a canonical model for PilB/PilT-driven pilus extension and retraction.

2026-09-12T15:35:50Z · MINTED_TRAITMECH_ID · codex
Minted type IV pilus as a DOI-backed TraitRecord after a repository-wide duplicate review covering ignored and hidden files; METPO has no exact live type IV pilus class yet and the placeholder is reserved in proposals/metpo_traitmech_v52.
2026-09-12T15:56:02Z · ADVERSARIAL_REVIEW_REPAIR · codex
Aligned the type IV pilus definition with dynamic extension and retraction evidence after Claude Code Review on PR #847.