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Bacterial maze runners reveal hidden diversity in chemotactic performance
M Mehdi Salek1, Francesco Carrara1, Vicente Fernandez1
1Institute for Environmental Engineering, Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland.
Abstract:
Chemotaxis allows microorganisms to exploit gradients in chemical stimuli to find nutrient resources and hosts or escape noxious substances. Thus, the life of individual microbes in their natural environments is a continual sequence of decisions based on the perceived chemical gradients. However, it has remained unclear to what extent the chemotaxis properties vary among cells of one species, and whether there is a spectrum of different 'decision makers' within populations of bacteria. In our recent study (Salek, Carrara et al., Nature Communications 10 (1), 1877), we combine microfluidic experiments with mathematical modeling to demonstrate that even in clonal populations, bacteria are individuals with different abilities to climb chemical gradients.
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