ArticleNature communications2017
An early mechanical coupling of planktonic bacteria in dilute suspensions.
Article in Nature communications, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 28 citations in OpenAlex.
- Biofilm structure as a key factor in antibiotic tolerance: insights from Bacillus subtilis model systems.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2025Article
- Physical communication pathways in bacteria: an extra layer to quorum sensing.Biophysical reviews · 2025Review
- Vitamin D3 potentiates antimicrobial and antibiofilm activities of streptomycin and thymoquinone against Pseudomonas aeruginosa.World journal of microbiology & biotechnology · 2025Article
- Bacillus subtilis EpsA-O: A novel exopolysaccharide structure acting as an efficient adhesive in biofilms.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2024Article
- eDNA Provides a Scaffold for Autoaggregation ofMicroorganisms · 2023Article
- Systems view of Bacillus subtilis pellicle development.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2022Article
- Maggot Extract Interrupts Bacterial Biofilm Formation and Maturation in Combination with Antibiotics by Reducing the Expression of Virulence Genes.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Modification of bacterial cells forFrontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2022Article
- Attenuation of Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilm by thymoquinone: an individual and combinatorial study with tetrazine-capped silver nanoparticles and tryptophan.Folia microbiologica · 2021Article
- Visible Light-Activated Carbon Dots for Inhibiting Biofilm Formation and Inactivating Biofilm-Associated Bacterial Cells.Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2021Article
- The COM-Poisson Process for Stochastic Modeling of Osmotic Inactivation Dynamics ofFrontiers in microbiology · 2021Article
- Mechanical Coupling of Puller and Pusher Active Microswimmers Influences Motility.Langmuir : the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids · 2020Article
- Nonlinear rheological characteristics of single species bacterial biofilms.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2020Article
- In vitro anti-biofilm activity of 14-deoxy-11,12-didehydroandrographolide from Andrographis paniculata against Pseudomonas aeruginosa.Brazilian journal of microbiology : [publication of the Brazilian Society for Microbiology] · 2020Article
- Regulating, Measuring, and Modeling the Viscoelasticity of Bacterial BiofilmsJournal of bacteriology · 2019Review
- Inception Mechanisms of Tunneling Nanotubes.Cells · 2019Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
It is generally accepted that planktonic bacteria in dilute suspensions are not mechanically coupled and do not show correlated motion. The mechanical coupling of cells is a trait that develops upon transition into a biofilm, a microbial community of self-aggregated bacterial cells. Here we employ optical tweezers to show that bacteria in dilute suspensions are mechanically coupled and show long-range correlated motion. The strength of the coupling increases with the growth of liquid bacterial culture. The matrix responsible for the mechanical coupling is composed of cell debris and extracellular polymer material. The fragile network connecting cells behaves as viscoelastic liquid of entangled extracellular polymers. Our findings point to physical connections between bacteria in dilute bacterial suspensions that may provide a mechanistic framework for understanding of biofilm formation, osmotic flow of nutrients, diffusion of signal molecules in quorum sensing, or different efficacy of antibiotic treatments at low and high bacterial densities.Planktonic bacteria are untethered to surfaces or to each other, and thus are expected to move independently when at low cell densities. Here Sretenovic et al. show, using optical tweezers, that bacteria in dilute suspensions are mechanically coupled and show long-range correlated motion.
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Registered trials
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.