Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 108, Issue 39, Pages 16235-16240Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1101996108
Keywords
bacterial chemotaxis; collective behavior; transport equation; kinetic theory
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Funding
- C'Nano Ile-de-France
- Institut Curie incitative program nosocomial infections.
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Chemotactic bacteria are known to collectively migrate towards sources of attractants. In confined convectionless geometries, concentration waves of swimming Escherichia coli can form and propagate through a self-organized process involving hundreds of thousands of these microorganisms. These waves are observed in particular in microcapillaries or microchannels; they result from the interaction between individual chemotactic bacteria and the macroscopic chemical gradients dynamically generated by the migrating population. By studying individual trajectories within the propagating wave, we show that, not only the mean run length is longer in the direction of propagation, but also that the directional persistence is larger compared to the opposite direction. This modulation of the reorientations significantly improves the efficiency of the collective migration. Moreover, these two quantities are spatially modulated along the concentration profile. We recover quantitatively these microscopic and macroscopic observations with a dedicated kinetic model.
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