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Updated: Oct 1, 2025
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Traction Microscopy Integrated with Microfluidics for Chemotactic Collective Migration
Published on: October 13, 2019
7.2K
Chemotactic smoothing of collective migration
Tapomoy Bhattacharjee1, Daniel B Amchin2, Ricard Alert3,4
1The Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, Princeton University, Princeton, United States.
Elife
|March 8, 2022
Summary
Bacterial populations exhibiting collective migration can overcome disruptions by autonomously smoothing their shape. This self-organization allows coordinated movement to persist despite environmental perturbations.
Area of Science:
- Active matter physics
- Microbiology
- Cellular dynamics
Background:
- Collective migration is a key emergent behavior in active matter, crucial for biological systems.
- Understanding how populations maintain migration during perturbations is essential but poorly understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how bacterial populations maintain collective migration when faced with perturbations.
- To elucidate the mechanisms behind the persistence of directed cellular motion in dynamic environments.
Main Methods:
- Studied bacterial populations migrating via chemotaxis.
- Analyzed responses to self-generated nutrient gradients.
- Investigated the impact of perturbations on population morphology and migration.
Main Results:
- Bacterial populations demonstrated an ability to autonomously smooth large-scale morphological perturbations.
- This smoothing mechanism enabled the continuation of collective migration.
- Observed that spatial variations in cellular signal transduction underlie the population-level smoothing effect.
Conclusions:
- Bacterial collective migration can be robust to perturbations through emergent self-organization.
- Cellular-level signal sensing and response variations drive population-scale morphology regulation.
- Findings offer insights for predicting and controlling collective migration in cellular populations and active matter.
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