ArticleScientific reports2017
Phototaxis as a Collective Phenomenon in Cyanobacterial Colonies.
Article in Scientific reports, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 32 citations in OpenAlex.
- Migration and structural implication of cyanobacteria in biological soil crusts in response to water and particle burial.Innovation (Cambridge (Mass.)) · 2025Article
- Biocrusts protect the Great Wall of China from erosion.Science advances · 2023Article
- Differential Phototactic Behavior of Closely Related Cyanobacterial Isolates from Yellowstone Hot Spring Biofilms.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2022Article
- PHB Producing Cyanobacteria Found in the Neighborhood-Their Isolation, Purification and Performance Testing.Bioengineering (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Article
- Bioluminescence and Photoreception in Unicellular Organisms: Light-Signalling in a Bio-Communication Perspective.International journal of molecular sciences · 2021Review
- Scattered migrating colony formation in the filamentous cyanobacterium, Pseudanabaena sp. NIES-4403.BMC microbiology · 2021Article
- The Role of the Cyanobacterial Type IV Pilus Machinery in Finding and Maintaining a Favourable Environment.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Review
- Information integration and collective motility in phototactic cyanobacteria.PLoS computational biology · 2020Article
- Phototaxis in a wild isolate of the cyanobacteriumProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Cyanobacteria are a diverse group of photosynthetic bacteria that exhibit phototaxis, or motion in response to light. Cyanobacteria such as Synechocystis sp. secrete a mixture of complex polysaccharides that facilitate cell motion, while their type 4 pili allow them to physically attach to each other. Even though cells can respond individually to light, colonies are observed to move collectively towards the light source in dense finger-like projections. We present an agent-based model for cyanobacterial phototaxis that accounts for slime deposition as well as for direct physical links between bacteria, mediated through their type 4 pili. We reproduce the experimentally observed aggregation of cells at the colony boundary as a precursor to finger formation. Our model also describes the changes in colony morphology that occur when the location of the light source is abruptly changed. We find that the overall motion of cells toward light remains relatively unimpaired even if a fraction of them do not sense light, allowing heterogeneous populations to continue to mount a robust collective response to stimuli. Our work suggests that in addition to bio-chemical signalling via diffusible molecules in the context of bacterial quorum-sensing, short-ranged physical interactions may also contribute to collective effects in bacterial motility.
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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.