ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2016
Speed-dependent chemotactic precision in marine bacteria.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 51 papers.
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Who cites it
51 citing papers in PubMed, 113 citations in OpenAlex.
- Article
- Repulsion from slow-diffusing nutrients improves microbial chemotaxis towards moving sources.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Molecular Mechanisms of Algicidal Bacteria in Controlling Harmful Algal Blooms: Advances in Bacteria-Algae Interactions.Environmental microbiology reports · 2026Review
- Altering chemotaxis as a strategy to enhance the foraging range of motility-restricted bacteria.Communications biology · 2026Article
- A close unicellular animal relative and predator of schistosomes exhibits chemokinesis in response to proteins and peptides from its prey.PLoS pathogens · 2025Article
- Navigating bacterial motility through chemotaxis: from molecular mechanisms to physiological perspectives.Folia microbiologica · 2025Review
- Chemokinesis by a microbial predator.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Slower swimming promotes chemotactic encounters between bacteria and small phytoplankton.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Optimal Cell Length for Exploration and Exploitation in Chemotactic Planktonic Bacteria.Environmental microbiology · 2024Article
- Bacterial clustering amplifies the reshaping of eutrophic plumes around marine particles: A hybrid data-driven model.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
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- Accelerating Genetic Sensor Development, Scale-up, and Deployment Using Synthetic Biology.Biodesign research · 2024Article
- Multiflagellarity leads to the size-independent swimming speed of peritrichous bacteria.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Physiological adaptation in flagellar architecture improvesProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Article
- Reproduction of bacterial chemotaxis by a non-living self-propelled object.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Porous marine snow differentially benefits chemotactic, motile, and nonmotile bacteria.PNAS nexus · 2023Article
- The Vibrio Polar Flagellum: Structure and Regulation.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2023Article
- Chemotaxis may assist marine heterotrophic bacterial diazotrophs to find microzones suitable for NThe ISME journal · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Chemotaxis underpins important ecological processes in marine bacteria, from the association with primary producers to the colonization of particles and hosts. Marine bacteria often swim with a single flagellum at high speeds, alternating "runs" with either 180° reversals or ∼90° "flicks," the latter resulting from a buckling instability of the flagellum. These adaptations diverge from Escherichia coli's classic run-and-tumble motility, yet how they relate to the strong and rapid chemotaxis characteristic of marine bacteria has remained unknown. We investigated the relationship between swimming speed, run-reverse-flick motility, and high-performance chemotaxis by tracking thousands of Vibrio alginolyticus cells in microfluidic gradients. At odds with current chemotaxis models, we found that chemotactic precision-the strength of accumulation of cells at the peak of a gradient-is swimming-speed dependent in V. alginolyticus Faster cells accumulate twofold more tightly by chemotaxis compared with slower cells, attaining an advantage in the exploitation of a resource additional to that of faster gradient climbing. Trajectory analysis and an agent-based mathematical model revealed that this unexpected advantage originates from a speed dependence of reorientation frequency and flicking, which were higher for faster cells, and was compounded by chemokinesis, an increase in speed with resource concentration. The absence of any one of these adaptations led to a 65-70% reduction in the population-level resource exposure. These findings indicate that, contrary to what occurs in E. coli, swimming speed can be a fundamental determinant of the gradient-seeking capabilities of marine bacteria, and suggest a new model of bacterial chemotaxis.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.