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Updated: Apr 5, 2026

Investigating Flagella-Driven Motility in Escherichia coli by Applying Three Established Techniques in a Series
Published on: May 10, 2020
Modelling the mechanics and hydrodynamics of swimming E. coli
Jinglei Hu1, Mingcheng Yang, Gerhard Gompper
1Theoretical Soft Matter and Biophysics, Institute for Advanced Simulation and Institute of Complex Systems, Forschungszentrum Jülich, D-52425 Jülich, Germany. j.hu@fz-juelich.de g.gompper@fz-juelich.de r.winkler@fz-juelich.de.
Abstract:
The swimming properties of an E. coli-type model bacterium are investigated by mesoscale hydrodynamic simulations, combining molecular dynamics simulations of the bacterium with the multiparticle particle collision dynamics method for the embedding fluid. The bacterium is composed of a spherocylindrical body with attached helical flagella, built up from discrete particles for an efficient coupling with the fluid. We measure the hydrodynamic friction coefficients of the bacterium and find quantitative agreement with experimental results of swimming E. coli. The flow field of the bacterium shows a force-dipole-like pattern in the swimming plane and two vortices perpendicular to its swimming direction arising from counterrotation of the cell body and the flagella. By comparison with the flow field of a force dipole and rotlet dipole, we extract the force-dipole and rotlet-dipole strengths for the bacterium and find that counterrotation of the cell body and the flagella is essential for describing the near-field hydrodynamics of the bacterium.
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