ArticleNature communications2019
Bacterial chemotaxis in a microfluidic T-maze reveals strong phenotypic heterogeneity in chemotactic sensitivity.
Article in Nature communications, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 40 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
40 citing papers in PubMed, 102 citations in OpenAlex.
- Growth-dependent sensory bet-hedging enhances collective navigation.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Noise-Guided Design of Synthetic Protein Waves in Living Cells.ACS synthetic biology · 2026Article
- Automated decision-making by chemical echolocation in active droplets.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Bacterial motility in rhizosphere colonization: mechanisms, constraints, and implications for microbial inoculants.The ISME journal · 2026Review
- Self-generated chemotaxis of mixed cell populations.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Navigating bacterial motility through chemotaxis: from molecular mechanisms to physiological perspectives.Folia microbiologica · 2025Review
- Phenotype structuring in collective cell migration: a tutorial of mathematical models and methods.Journal of mathematical biology · 2025Review
- Approximate Solutions of a General Stochastic Velocity-Jump Model Subject to Discrete-Time Noisy Observations.Bulletin of mathematical biology · 2025Article
- Decoding physical principles of cell migration under controlled environment using microfluidics.Biophysics reviews · 2024Review
- Signal integration and adaptive sensory diversity tuning in Escherichia coli chemotaxis.Cell systems · 2024Article
- Multiscale Porosity Microfluidics to Study Bacterial Transport in Heterogeneous Chemical Landscapes.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2024Article
- Microfluidic approaches in microbial ecology.Lab on a chip · 2024Review
- Direct measurement of dynamic attractant gradients reveals breakdown of the Patlak-Keller-Segel chemotaxis model.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Agency as an Inherent Property of Living Organisms.Biological theory · 2024Review
- Article
- Direct measurement of dynamic attractant gradients reveals breakdown of the Patlak-Keller-Segel chemotaxis model.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Microbial Cells as a Microrobots: From Drug Delivery to Advanced Biosensors.Biomimetics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- 3D free-assembly modular microfluidics inspired by movable type printing.Microsystems & nanoengineering · 2023Article
- Understanding the Cell's Response to Chemical Signals: Utilisation of Microfluidic Technology in Studies of Cellular andMicromachines · 2022Review
- Bacterial chemotaxis in static gradients quantified in a biopolymer membrane-integrated microfluidic platform.Lab on a chip · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Many microorganisms have evolved chemotactic strategies to exploit the microscale heterogeneity that frequently characterizes microbial habitats. Chemotaxis has been primarily studied as an average characteristic of a population, with little regard for variability among individuals. Here, we adopt a classic tool from animal ecology - the T-maze - and implement it at the microscale by using microfluidics to expose bacteria to a sequence of decisions, each consisting of migration up or down a chemical gradient. Single-cell observations of clonal Escherichia coli in the maze, coupled with a mathematical model, reveal that strong heterogeneity in the chemotactic sensitivity coefficient exists even within clonal populations of bacteria. A comparison of different potential sources of heterogeneity reveals that heterogeneity in the T-maze originates primarily from the chemotactic sensitivity coefficient, arising from a distribution of pathway gains. This heterogeneity may have a functional role, for example in the context of migratory bet-hedging strategies.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.