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Escherichia coli swimming is robust against variations in flagellar number

Bacterial chemotaxis is a paradigm for how environmental signals modulate cellular behavior. Although the network underlying this process has been studied extensively, we do not yet have an end-to-end understanding of chemotaxis. Specifically, how the rotational states of a cell’s flagella cooperati...

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Autores principales: Mears, Patrick J, Koirala, Santosh, Rao, Chris V, Golding, Ido, Chemla, Yann R
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3917375/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24520165
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.01916
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author Mears, Patrick J
Koirala, Santosh
Rao, Chris V
Golding, Ido
Chemla, Yann R
author_facet Mears, Patrick J
Koirala, Santosh
Rao, Chris V
Golding, Ido
Chemla, Yann R
author_sort Mears, Patrick J
collection PubMed
description Bacterial chemotaxis is a paradigm for how environmental signals modulate cellular behavior. Although the network underlying this process has been studied extensively, we do not yet have an end-to-end understanding of chemotaxis. Specifically, how the rotational states of a cell’s flagella cooperatively determine whether the cell ‘runs’ or ‘tumbles’ remains poorly characterized. Here, we measure the swimming behavior of individual E. coli cells while simultaneously detecting the rotational states of each flagellum. We find that a simple mathematical expression relates the cell’s run/tumble bias to the number and average rotational state of its flagella. However, due to inter-flagellar correlations, an ‘effective number’ of flagella—smaller than the actual number—enters into this relation. Data from a chemotaxis mutant and stochastic modeling suggest that fluctuations of the regulator CheY-P are the source of flagellar correlations. A consequence of inter-flagellar correlations is that run/tumble behavior is only weakly dependent on number of flagella. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.01916.001
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spelling pubmed-39173752014-02-12 Escherichia coli swimming is robust against variations in flagellar number Mears, Patrick J Koirala, Santosh Rao, Chris V Golding, Ido Chemla, Yann R eLife Biophysics and Structural Biology Bacterial chemotaxis is a paradigm for how environmental signals modulate cellular behavior. Although the network underlying this process has been studied extensively, we do not yet have an end-to-end understanding of chemotaxis. Specifically, how the rotational states of a cell’s flagella cooperatively determine whether the cell ‘runs’ or ‘tumbles’ remains poorly characterized. Here, we measure the swimming behavior of individual E. coli cells while simultaneously detecting the rotational states of each flagellum. We find that a simple mathematical expression relates the cell’s run/tumble bias to the number and average rotational state of its flagella. However, due to inter-flagellar correlations, an ‘effective number’ of flagella—smaller than the actual number—enters into this relation. Data from a chemotaxis mutant and stochastic modeling suggest that fluctuations of the regulator CheY-P are the source of flagellar correlations. A consequence of inter-flagellar correlations is that run/tumble behavior is only weakly dependent on number of flagella. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.01916.001 eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2014-02-11 /pmc/articles/PMC3917375/ /pubmed/24520165 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.01916 Text en Copyright © 2013, Mears et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Biophysics and Structural Biology
Mears, Patrick J
Koirala, Santosh
Rao, Chris V
Golding, Ido
Chemla, Yann R
Escherichia coli swimming is robust against variations in flagellar number
title Escherichia coli swimming is robust against variations in flagellar number
title_full Escherichia coli swimming is robust against variations in flagellar number
title_fullStr Escherichia coli swimming is robust against variations in flagellar number
title_full_unstemmed Escherichia coli swimming is robust against variations in flagellar number
title_short Escherichia coli swimming is robust against variations in flagellar number
title_sort escherichia coli swimming is robust against variations in flagellar number
topic Biophysics and Structural Biology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3917375/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24520165
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.01916
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