ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2009
Periodic reversal of direction allows Myxobacteria to swarm.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 58 papers.
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Who cites it
58 citing papers in PubMed.
- Bacteria regulate collective behaviour by mechanosensing cell-cell collisions.Nature microbiology · 2026Article
- Study of wrap mode impact on Pseudomonas aeruginosa motion in the chemotactic field of fungi.NPJ systems biology and applications · 2026Article
- Individual bacterial cells can use spatial sensing of chemical gradients to direct chemotaxis on surfaces.Nature microbiology · 2024Article
- The GGDEF protein Dgc2 suppresses both motility and biofilm formation in the filamentous cyanobacteriumMicrobiology spectrum · 2023Article
- Swarming ofBiophysics reviews · 2023Review
- Ant waves-Spontaneous activity waves in fire-ant columns.Science advances · 2023Article
- Social interactions lead to motility-induced phase separation in fire ants.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Flagellar Motor Transformed: Biophysical Perspectives of theFrontiers in microbiology · 2022Article
- Scattered migrating colony formation in the filamentous cyanobacterium, Pseudanabaena sp. NIES-4403.BMC microbiology · 2021Article
- Reframing cognition: getting down to biological basics.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Light-switchable propulsion of active particles with reversible interactions.Nature communications · 2020Article
- Dynamic motility selection drives population segregation in a bacterial swarm.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Interplay of mesoscale physics and agent-like behaviors in the parallel evolution of aggregative multicellularity.EvoDevo · 2020Review
- Swarming Motility Without Flagellar Motor Switching by Reversal of Swimming Direction inFrontiers in microbiology · 2020Article
- A statistical physics view of swarming bacteria.Movement ecology · 2019Review
- Collective cell migration without proliferation: density determines cell velocity and wave velocity.Royal Society open science · 2018Article
- Article
- Tuning the motility and directionality of self-propelled colloids.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Reversals and collisions optimize protein exchange in bacterial swarms.Physical review. E · 2017Article
- Sibling Rivalry in Myxococcus xanthus Is Mediated by Kin Recognition and a Polyploid Prophage.Journal of bacteriology · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Many bacteria can rapidly traverse surfaces from which they are extracting nutrient for growth. They generate flat, spreading colonies, called swarms because they resemble swarms of insects. We seek to understand how members of any dense swarm spread efficiently while being able to perceive and interfere minimally with the motion of others. To this end, we investigate swarms of the myxobacterium, Myxococcus xanthus. Individual M. xanthus cells are elongated; they always move in the direction of their long axis; and they are in constant motion, repeatedly touching each other. Remarkably, they regularly reverse their gliding directions. We have constructed a detailed cell- and behavior-based computational model of M. xanthus swarming that allows the organization of cells to be computed. By using the model, we are able to show that reversals of gliding direction are essential for swarming and that reversals increase the outflow of cells across the edge of the swarm. Cells at the swarm edge gain maximum exposure to nutrient and oxygen. We also find that the reversal period predicted to maximize the outflow of cells is the same (within the errors of measurement) as the period observed in experiments with normal M. xanthus cells. This coincidence suggests that the circuit regulating reversals evolved to its current sensitivity under selection for growth achieved by swarming. Finally, we observe that, with time, reversals increase the cell alignment, and generate clusters of parallel cells.
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