Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 20, 2026

Generating Controlled, Dynamic Chemical Landscapes to Study Microbial Behavior
Published on: January 31, 2020
Steadily propagating waves of a chemotaxis model
1Department of Mathematics, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA. tong-li@uiowa.edu
Abstract:
This paper studies the existence, asymptotic decay rates, nonlinear stability, wave speed and chemical diffusion limits of traveling wave solutions to a chemotaxis model describing the initiation of angiogenesis and reinforced random walk. By transforming the chemotaxis system, via a Hopf-Cole transformation, into a system of conservation laws, the authors studied the traveling wave solutions of the transformed system in previous papers. One of the purposes of this paper is to transfer the results of the transformed system to the original Keller-Segel chemotaxis model. It turns out that only partial results of the transformed system have physical meaning when they are passed back to the original system. Thus the transformed system is not entirely equivalent to the original system. Particularly the chemical growth rate parameter appeared in the original system vanishes in the transformed system. Hence to understand the role of this parameter, one has to go back to the original system. Moreover, we establish some new results on zero chemical diffusion limits of traveling wave solutions. Numerical simulations of steadily propagating waves are shown.
Related Concept Videos
Chemotaxis in E. coli
Chemotaxis and Direction of Cell Migration
Actin Polymerization and Cell Motility
Actin cytoskeleton dynamics can produce pushing, pulling, and resistance forces that help the cell to migrate.
Cell Migration
Flagella and Motility in Bacteria
Travelling Waves
Water waves, sound waves, and seismic waves are some examples of mechanical waves. For water waves, the wave propagation medium is water;...

