ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2019
Mechanisms for bacterial gliding motility on soft substrates.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 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
17 citing papers in PubMed.
- Bioinspired milliscale near-boundary undulatory motion for fluid transport and adhesive locomotion.Science advances · 2026Article
- Chiral gliding: Right-handed navigation of filamentous cyanobacteria.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Phase variation of Clostridioides difficile colony morphology occurs via modulation of cell division.PLoS pathogens · 2025Article
- Form and function in biological filaments: a physicist's review.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2025Review
- Substrate stiffness modulates collective colony expansion of the social bacteriumAPL bioengineering · 2025Article
- A lytic transglycosylase connects bacterial focal adhesion complexes to the peptidoglycan cell wall.eLife · 2024Article
- A lytic transglycosylase connects bacterial focal adhesion complexes to the peptidoglycan cell wall.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Article
- Article
- Bacterial Motility and Its Role in Skin and Wound Infections.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Review
- Escaping speed of bacteria from confinement.Biophysical journal · 2022Article
- Chemotactic Bacteria Facilitate the Dispersion of Nonmotile Bacteria through Micrometer-Sized Pores in Engineered Porous Media.Environmental science & technology · 2022Article
- Structural mechanics of filamentous cyanobacteria.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2022Article
- Methods to Evaluate Bacterial Motility and Its Role in Bacterial-Host Interactions.Microorganisms · 2022Review
- Flagellar Motor Transformed: Biophysical Perspectives of theFrontiers in microbiology · 2022Article
- Pectin Induced Colony Expansion of Soil-DerivedFrontiers in microbiology · 2021Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The motility mechanism of certain prokaryotes has long been a mystery, since their motion, known as gliding, involves no external appendages. The physical principles behind gliding still remain poorly understood. Using myxobacteria as an example of such organisms, we identify here the physical principles behind gliding motility and develop a theoretical model that predicts a 2-regime behavior of the gliding speed as a function of the substrate stiffness. Our theory describes the elasto-capillary-hydrodynamic interactions between the membrane of the bacteria, the slime it secretes, and the soft substrate underneath. Defining gliding as the horizontal translation under zero net force, we find the 2-regime behavior is due to 2 distinct mechanisms of motility thrust. On mildly soft substrates, the thrust arises from bacterial shape deformations creating a flow of slime that exerts a pressure along the bacterial length. This pressure in conjunction with the bacterial shape provides the necessary thrust for propulsion. On very soft substrates, however, we show that capillary effects must be considered that lead to the formation of a ridge at the slime-substrate-air interface, thereby creating a thrust in the form of a localized pressure gradient at the bacterial leading edge. To test our theory, we perform experiments with isolated cells on agar substrates of varying stiffness and find the measured gliding speeds in good agreement with the predictions from our elasto-capillary-hydrodynamic model. The mechanisms reported here serve as an important step toward an accurate theory of friction and substrate-mediated interactions between bacteria proliferating in soft media.
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.