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Cell morphology governs directional control in swimming bacteria
The ability to rapidly detect and track nutrient gradients is key to the ecological success of motile bacteria in aquatic systems. Consequently, bacteria have evolved a number of chemotactic strategies that consist of sequences of straight runs and reorientations. Theoretically, both phases are affe...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5435708/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28515428 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-01565-y |
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author | Guadayol, Òscar Thornton, Katie L. Humphries, Stuart |
author_facet | Guadayol, Òscar Thornton, Katie L. Humphries, Stuart |
author_sort | Guadayol, Òscar |
collection | PubMed |
description | The ability to rapidly detect and track nutrient gradients is key to the ecological success of motile bacteria in aquatic systems. Consequently, bacteria have evolved a number of chemotactic strategies that consist of sequences of straight runs and reorientations. Theoretically, both phases are affected by fluid drag and Brownian motion, which are themselves governed by cell geometry. Here, we experimentally explore the effect of cell length on control of swimming direction. We subjected Escherichia coli to an antibiotic to obtain motile cells of different lengths, and characterized their swimming patterns in a homogeneous medium. As cells elongated, angles between runs became smaller, forcing a change from a run-and-tumble to a run-and-stop/reverse pattern. Our results show that changes in the motility pattern of microorganisms can be induced by simple morphological variation, and raise the possibility that changes in swimming pattern may be triggered by both morphological plasticity and selection on morphology. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5435708 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-54357082017-05-18 Cell morphology governs directional control in swimming bacteria Guadayol, Òscar Thornton, Katie L. Humphries, Stuart Sci Rep Article The ability to rapidly detect and track nutrient gradients is key to the ecological success of motile bacteria in aquatic systems. Consequently, bacteria have evolved a number of chemotactic strategies that consist of sequences of straight runs and reorientations. Theoretically, both phases are affected by fluid drag and Brownian motion, which are themselves governed by cell geometry. Here, we experimentally explore the effect of cell length on control of swimming direction. We subjected Escherichia coli to an antibiotic to obtain motile cells of different lengths, and characterized their swimming patterns in a homogeneous medium. As cells elongated, angles between runs became smaller, forcing a change from a run-and-tumble to a run-and-stop/reverse pattern. Our results show that changes in the motility pattern of microorganisms can be induced by simple morphological variation, and raise the possibility that changes in swimming pattern may be triggered by both morphological plasticity and selection on morphology. Nature Publishing Group UK 2017-05-17 /pmc/articles/PMC5435708/ /pubmed/28515428 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-01565-y Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article Guadayol, Òscar Thornton, Katie L. Humphries, Stuart Cell morphology governs directional control in swimming bacteria |
title | Cell morphology governs directional control in swimming bacteria |
title_full | Cell morphology governs directional control in swimming bacteria |
title_fullStr | Cell morphology governs directional control in swimming bacteria |
title_full_unstemmed | Cell morphology governs directional control in swimming bacteria |
title_short | Cell morphology governs directional control in swimming bacteria |
title_sort | cell morphology governs directional control in swimming bacteria |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5435708/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28515428 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-01565-y |
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