title: How the motility pattern of bacteria affects their dispersal and chemotaxis.
abstract: Most bacteria at certain stages of their life cycle are able to move actively; they can swim in a liquid or crawl on various surfaces. A typical path of the moving cell often resembles the trajectory of a random walk. However, bacteria are capable of modifying their apparently random motion in response to changing environmental conditions. As a result, bacteria can migrate towards the source of nutrients or away from harmful chemicals. Surprisingly, many bacterial species that were studied have several distinct motility patterns, which can be theoretically modeled by a unifying random walk approach. We use this approach to quantify the process of cell dispersal in a homogeneous environment and show how the bacterial drift velocity towards the source of attracting chemicals is affected by the motility pattern of the bacteria. Our results open up the possibility of accessing additional information about the intrinsic response of the cells using macroscopic observations of bacteria moving in inhomogeneous environments.
authors.affiliation: Max-Planck-Institut für Physik komplexer Systeme, Dresden, Germany ; Technische Universität Berlin, Institut für Theoretische Physik, Berlin, Germany ; Harvard University, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States.
authors.forename: Johannes
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Taktikos
authors.affiliation: Technische Universität Berlin, Institut für Theoretische Physik, Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Holger
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Stark
authors.affiliation: Max-Planck-Institut für Physik komplexer Systeme, Dresden, Germany ; Harvard University, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States.
authors.forename: Vasily
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Zaburdaev
mesh_terms: D018407:Bacterial Physiological Phenomena; D002633:Chemotaxis / Q000502:physiology; D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000502:physiology; D008954:Models, Biological; D009068:Movement / Q000502:physiology; D044149:Vibrio alginolyticus / Q000502:physiology