Transient drift of Escherichia coli under diffusing Step nutrient profile

• Main Authors: Samanta, Sibendu, Layek, Ritwik, Kar, Shantimoy, Mukhopadhyay, Sudipta, Chakraborty, Suman
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 09-06-2018
• Subjects: Physics - Biological Physics; Quantitative Biology - Cell Behavior
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.1806.03518

Phys. Rev. E 98, 052413 (2018) Bacteria such as Escherichia coli (E. coli) exhibit biased motion if kept in
a spatially non-uniform chemical environment. Here, we bring out unique
time-dependent characteristics of bacterial chemotaxis, in response to a
diffusing spatial step ligand profile. The experimentally obtained temporal
characteristics of the drift velocity are compared with the theoretical and
Monte-Carlo simulation based estimates, and excellent agreements can be
obtained. These results bring in new insights on the time-responsive facets of
bacterial drift, bearing far reaching implications in understanding their
migratory dynamics in the quest of finding foods by swimming toward the highest
concentration of food molecules, or for fleeing from poisons, as well as
towards the better understanding of therapeutic response characteristics for
certain infectious diseases.