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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...

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Autores principales: Guadayol, Òscar, Thornton, Katie L., Humphries, Stuart
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2017
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.
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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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