Journal
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
Volume 10, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-09521-2
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- NSERC fellowship
- NSF CAREER grant [CBET-CAREER-1554095]
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Marine Microbiology Initiative Investigator Award [3783]
- Simons Foundation through the Principles of Microbial Ecosystems (PriME) collaboration
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Many microorganisms have evolved chemotactic strategies to exploit the microscale heterogeneity that frequently characterizes microbial habitats. Chemotaxis has been primarily studied as an average characteristic of a population, with little regard for variability among individuals. Here, we adopt a classic tool from animal ecology - the T-maze - and implement it at the microscale by using microfluidics to expose bacteria to a sequence of decisions, each consisting of migration up or down a chemical gradient. Single-cell observations of clonal Escherichia coli in the maze, coupled with a mathematical model, reveal that strong heterogeneity in the chemotactic sensitivity coefficient exists even within clonal populations of bacteria. A comparison of different potential sources of heterogeneity reveals that heterogeneity in the T-maze originates primarily from the chemotactic sensitivity coefficient, arising from a distribution of pathway gains. This heterogeneity may have a functional role, for example in the context of migratory bet-hedging strategies.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available