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Salmonellabacteria owe their motility to the rotation of bundled protein filaments known as flagella. While the method by which flagella impart motility is known, there is a scarcity of data elucidating the critical process of flagellum bundling itself. This work hypothesises the process of flagellum bundling to be an energetically driven phenomenon in which a physical state transition drives the formation of the flagellum bundle at the surface of aSalmonellacell.In vitroanalysis of intact flagella, detached and purified fromSalmonella entericaserovar Typhimurium cells, with cross-polarised light microscopy demonstrates a transition from an isotropic to mesophasic suspension at physiologically relevant concentrations. We believe the state transition of flagellum suspensions to the liquid crystalline state directs the formation of the flagellum bundle and thus plays a role inSalmonellamotility that, until this point, has been sparsely investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]