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How the Motility Pattern of Bacteria Affects Their Dispersal and Chemotaxis

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  • Johannes Taktikos
  • Holger Stark
  • Vasily Zaburdaev

Abstract

Most bacteria at certain stages of their life cycle are able to move actively; they can swim in a liquid or crawl on various surfaces. A typical path of the moving cell often resembles the trajectory of a random walk. However, bacteria are capable of modifying their apparently random motion in response to changing environmental conditions. As a result, bacteria can migrate towards the source of nutrients or away from harmful chemicals. Surprisingly, many bacterial species that were studied have several distinct motility patterns, which can be theoretically modeled by a unifying random walk approach. We use this approach to quantify the process of cell dispersal in a homogeneous environment and show how the bacterial drift velocity towards the source of attracting chemicals is affected by the motility pattern of the bacteria. Our results open up the possibility of accessing additional information about the intrinsic response of the cells using macroscopic observations of bacteria moving in inhomogeneous environments.

Suggested Citation

  • Johannes Taktikos & Holger Stark & Vasily Zaburdaev, 2013. "How the Motility Pattern of Bacteria Affects Their Dispersal and Chemotaxis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(12), pages 1-8, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0081936
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0081936
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    Cited by:

    1. Giuseppe Passucci & Megan E Brasch & James H Henderson & Vasily Zaburdaev & M Lisa Manning, 2019. "Identifying the mechanism for superdiffusivity in mouse fibroblast motility," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(2), pages 1-15, February.
    2. Zhang, Bing & Li, Wei & Guo, Yuan & Zhang, Zhiqiang & Shi, Wenxin & Cui, Fuyi & Lens, Piet N.L. & Tay, Joo Hwa, 2020. "Microalgal-bacterial consortia: From interspecies interactions to biotechnological applications," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    3. Christina Kurzthaler & Suvendu Mandal & Tapomoy Bhattacharjee & Hartmut Löwen & Sujit S. Datta & Howard A. Stone, 2021. "A geometric criterion for the optimal spreading of active polymers in porous media," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-10, December.
    4. Zhou, Yu & Leung, Yee & Chan, Lung Sang, 2017. "Oscillatory tendency of interevent direction in earthquake sequences," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 478(C), pages 120-130.

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