title: Analysis of bacterial chemotactic response using dynamic laser speckle.
abstract: Chemotaxis has a meaningful role in several fields, such as microbial physiology, medicine and biotechnology. We present a new application of dynamic laser speckle (or biospeckle) to detect different degrees of bacterial motility during chemotactic response experiments. Encouraging results showed different bacterial dynamic responses due to differences in the hardness of the support in the swarming plates. We compare this method to a conventional technique that uses white light. Both methods showed to be analogous and, in some cases, complementary. The results suggest that biospeckle processed images can be used as an alternative method to evaluate bacterial chemotactic response and can supply additional information about the bacterial motility in different areas of the swarm plate assay that might be useful for biological analysis.
authors.affiliation: Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Facultad de Ingenieria, Departamento de Quimica, Grupo de Ingenieria Bioquimica, Juan B. Justo 4302, 7600 Mar del Plata, Argentina.
authors.forename: Silvia E
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Murialdo
authors.forename: Gonzalo H
authors.initials: GH
authors.lastname: Sendra
authors.forename: Lucía I
authors.initials: LI
authors.lastname: Passoni
authors.forename: Ricardo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Arizaga
authors.forename: J Froilán
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Gonzalez
authors.forename: Héctor
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Rabal
authors.forename: Marcelo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Trivi
mesh_terms: D002633:Chemotaxis / Q000502:physiology*; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D007834:Lasers; D057054:Molecular Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D011550:Pseudomonas aeruginosa / Q000502:physiology*