How the Motility Pattern of Bacteria Affects Their Dispersal and Chemotaxis

Taktikos J, Stark H, Zaburdaev V (2013)

Publication Status: Published

Publication Type: Journal article

Publication year: 2013

Journal

PLoS ONE Public Library of Science

Publisher: PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE

Book Volume: 8

Journal Issue: 12

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0081936

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.

Authors with CRIS profile

Vasily Zaburdaev

Additional Organisation(s)

Lehrstuhl für Mathematik in den Lebenswissenschaften

Involved external institutions

Max-Planck-Institut für Physik komplexer Systeme (MPI PKS) / Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems DE Germany (DE) Technische Universität Berlin DE Germany (DE)

How to cite

APA:

Taktikos, J., Stark, H., & Zaburdaev, V. (2013). How the Motility Pattern of Bacteria Affects Their Dispersal and Chemotaxis. PLoS ONE, 8(12). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0081936

MLA:

Taktikos, Johannes, Holger Stark, and Vasily Zaburdaev. "How the Motility Pattern of Bacteria Affects Their Dispersal and Chemotaxis." PLoS ONE 8.12 (2013).

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