ArticleNature communications2025
Physics of swimming and its fitness cost determine strategies of bacterial investment in flagellar motility.
Article in Nature communications, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Cellular scale search and funneling drive bacterial penetration of extreme confinements.Communications physics · 2026Article
- Pseudoalteromonas nanhaiensis sp. nov., a Novel Bacterium Isolated from South China Sea.Current microbiology · 2026Article
- Temperate phages enhance bacterial host fitness via RNA-guided flagellar remodelling.Nature microbiology · 2026Article
- Downregulation of motility during stress requires stressosome input inApplied and environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- Growth-dependent sensory bet-hedging enhances collective navigation.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Toolbox of FRET-based c-di-GMP biosensors and its FRET-To-Sort application for genome-wide mapping of c-di-GMP regulation.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Medium dependent factors govern the functionality of engineered type III secretion systems.Journal of biological engineering · 2025Article
- Enhanced dispersion of active microswimmers in confined flows.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Origin and adaptive evolutionary trajectory of the 3' UTR-derived sRNA UhpU in Enterobacteriaceae.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- A fast and label-free DC-iDEP microfluidic device detects bacterial motility and andrographolide efficacy in motility inhibition.Mikrochimica acta · 2025Article
- Paeonol eradicates biofilm in porcine-source Escherichia coli by targeting the quorum sensing system.BMC veterinary research · 2025Article
- Control of flagellar gene expression by a chemotaxis receptor-like regulator in pathogenic Escherichia coli.The EMBO journal · 2025Article
- ChemotaxingArXiv · 2025Article
- ChemotaxingbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Regulatory Plasticity and Metabolic Trade-offs Drive Adaptive Evolution of Alternative Flagellar Configurations inbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Experimental evolution partially restores functionality of bacterial chemotaxis network with reduced number of components.PLoS genetics · 2025Article
- Motile and Chemotactic Minicells and Minicell-Driven Biohybrids Engineered for Active Cargo Delivery.ACS applied materials & interfaces · 2025Article
- Scrutinizing Stator Rotation in the Bacterial Flagellum: Reconciling Experiments and Switching Models.Biomolecules · 2025Review
- Nongenetic adaptation by collective migration.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Microorganisms must distribute their limited resources among different physiological functions, including those that do not directly contribute to growth. In this study, we investigate the allocation of resources to flagellar swimming, the most prominent and biosynthetically costly of such cellular functions in bacteria. Although the growth-dependence of flagellar gene expression in peritrichously flagellated Escherichia coli is well known, the underlying physiological limitations and regulatory strategies are not fully understood. By characterizing the dependence of motile behavior on the activity of the flagellar regulon, we demonstrate that, beyond a critical number of filaments, the hydrodynamics of propulsion limits the ability of bacteria to increase their swimming by synthesizing additional flagella. In nutrient-rich conditions, E. coli apparently maximizes its motility until reaching this limit, while avoiding the excessive cost of flagella production. Conversely, during carbon-limited growth motility remains below maximal levels and inversely correlates with the growth rate. The physics of swimming may further explain the selection for bimodal resource allocation in motility at low average expression levels. Notwithstanding strain-specific variation, the expression of flagellar genes in all tested natural isolates of E. coli also falls within the same range defined by the physical limitations on swimming and its biosynthetic cost.
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