Effects of receptor interaction in bacterial chemotaxis

Signaling in bacterial chemotaxis is mediated by several types of transmembrane chemoreceptors. The chemoreceptors form tight polar clusters whose functions are of great biological interest. Here, we study the general properties of a chemotaxis model that includes interaction between neighboring chemoreceptors within a receptor cluster and the appropriate receptor methylation and demethylation dynamics to maintain (near) perfect adaptation. We find that, depending on the receptor coupling strength, there are two steady-state phases in the model: a stationary phase and an oscillatory phase. The mechanism for the existence of the two phases is understood analytically. Two important phenomena in transient response, the overshoot in response to a pulse stimulus and the high gain in response to sustained changes in external ligand concentrations, can be explained in our model, and the mechanisms for these two seemingly different phenomena are found to be closely related. The model also naturally accounts for several key in vitro response experiments and the recent in vivo fluorescence resonance energy transfer experiments for various mutant strains. Quantitatively, our study reveals possible choices of parameters for fitting the existing experiments and suggests future experiments to test the model predictions.