Pilus

A pilus (Latin for 'hair'; plural : pili) is a hairlike appendage found on the surface of many bacteria. The terms pilus and fimbria (Latin for 'thread' or 'fiber'; plural: fimbriae) can be used interchangeably, although some researchers reserve the term pilus for the appendage required for bacterial conjugation. All pili are primarily composed of oligomeric pilin proteins.

Dozens of these structures can exist on the bacteria. Some bacterial viruses or bacteriophages attach to receptors on pili at the start of their reproductive cycle.

Pili are antigenic. They are also fragile and constantly replaced, sometimes with pili of different composition, resulting in altered antigenicity. Specific host responses to old pili structure are not effective on the new structure. Recombination genes of pili code for variable (V) and constant (C) regions of the pili (similar to immunoglobulin diversity).