Running and tumbling with E. coli in polymeric solutions

Abstract

Run-and-tumble motility is widely used by swimming microorganisms including numerous prokaryotic eukaryotic organisms. Here, we experimentally investigate the run-and-tumble dynamics of the bacterium E. coli in polymeric solutions. We find that even small amounts of polymer in solution can drastically change E. coli dynamics: cells tumble less and their velocity increases, leading to an enhancement in cell translational diffusion and a sudden decline in rotational diffusion. We show that suppression of tumbling is due to fluid viscosity while the enhancement in swimming speed is mainly due to fluid elasticity. Visualization of single fluorescently labeled DNA polymers reveals that the flow generated by individual E. coli is sufficiently strong to stretch polymer molecules and induce elastic stresses in the fluid, which in turn can act on the cell in such a way to enhance its transport. Our results show that the transport and spread of chemotactic cells can be independently modified and controlled by the fluid material properties.

References in corpus (7)

• Propulsion in a viscoelastic fluid
• Flagellated bacterial motility in polymer solutions
• Unusual swelling of a polymer in a bacterial bath
• Flagellar Kinematics and Swimming of Algal Cells in Viscoelastic Fluids
• Fluid elasticity increases the locomotion of flexible swimmers
• Undulatory swimming in shear-thinning fluids: Experiments with C. elegans
• Life at high Deborah number

Cited by in corpus (63)

• Computational models for active matter
• Dynamics of self-propelled Janus particles in viscoelastic fluids
• Enhanced bacterial swimming speeds in macromolecular polymer solutions
• Active colloids in complex fluids
• Origins of eukaryotic excitability
• The colloidal nature of complex fluids leads to enhanced motility of flagellated bacteria
• Particle diffusion in active fluids is non-monotonic in size
• The propagation of active-passive interfaces in bacterial swarms
• Enhanced rotational motion of spherical squirmer in polymer solutions
• Current fluctuations in non-interacting run-and-tumble particles in one-dimension
• Design of nematic liquid crystals to control microscale dynamics
• Generalized Ornstein-Uhlenbeck Model for Active Motion
• Tunable active rotational diffusion in swimming droplets
• Changes in the flagellar bundling time account for variations in swimming behavior of flagellated bacteria in viscous media
• Highly Sensitive and Label-free Digital Detection of Whole Cell E. coli with Interferometric Reflectance Imaging
• Effects of shear thinning viscosity and viscoelastic stresses on flagellated bacteria motility
• Active particles in geometrically confined viscoelastic fluids
• Characterization of MIPS in a suspension of repulsive Active Brownian Particles through dynamical features
• Run-and-pause dynamics of cytoskeletal motor proteins
• Non-equilibrium fluctuations and nonlinear response of an active bath
• The cost of swimming in generalized Newtonian fluids: Experiments with C. elegans
• Wall entrapment of peritrichous bacteria: A mesoscale hydrodynamics simulation study
• Viscoelastic propulsion of a rotating dumbbell
• Transient anomalous diffusion in run-and-tumble dynamics
• Active matter in a viscoelastic environment
• Bacteria hinder large-scale transport and enhance small-scale mixing in time-periodic flows
• A connection between bacterial chemotactic network and optimal filtering
• Dark Field Differential Dynamic Microscopy enables the accurate characterization of the roto-translational dynamics of bacteria and colloidal clusters
• Dynamics of self-propelled tracer particles inside a polymer network
• Diffusion of chiral active particles in a Poiseuille flow
• Pinch-off of bubbles in a polymer solution
• Role of viscoelasticity on the dynamics and aggregation of chemically active sphere-dimers
• Transport of a self-propelled tracer through a hairy cylindrical channel: interplay of stickiness and activity
• Deforming Active Droplets in Viscoelastic Media
• Orientational Memory of Active Particles in Multistate Non-Markovian Processes
• Biopolymer dynamics driven by helical flagella
• Propulsion of a chiral swimmer in viscoelastic fluids
• Diffraction and interference with run-and-tumble particles
• Enhancing Transport Barriers with Swimming Microorganisms in Chaotic Flows
• Formation of a strong negative wake behind a helical swimmer in a viscoelastic fluid
• Self-avoidant memory effects on enhanced diffusion in a stochastic model of environmentally responsive swimming droplets
• Overload wave-memory induces amnesia of a self-propelled particle
• Universal scaling of the diffusivity of dendrimers in a semidilute solution of linear polymers
• Activity pulses induce spontaneous flow reversals in viscoelastic environments
• Bacterial Communications and Computing in Internet of Everything (IoE)
• Orientational dynamics and rheology of active suspensions in weakly viscoelastic flows
• Tradeoffs in concentration sensing in dynamic environments
• Tuning the torque-speed characteristics of bacterial flagellar motor to enhance the swimming speed
• Kinematics of Persistent Random Walkers with Two Distinct Modes of Motion
• Re-entrant percolation in active Brownian hard disks
• Sedimentation dynamics of passive particles in dilute bacterial suspensions: emergence of bioconvection
• Zig-zag dynamics in a Stern-Gerlach spin measurement
• Towards neural reinforcement learning for large deviations in nonequilibrium systems with memory
• Simulations of Three-dimensional Nematic Guidance of Microswimmers
• Exact solution to a Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook-type equation for quantum lattice gases with dephasing noise
• Bayesian inference of Lévy walks via hidden Markov models
• Beyond the Markovian limit: Exact solutions for active motion in a power-law viscoelastic bath
• Non-reciprocal interactions between condensates in chemically active mixtures
• Scattering of rod-like swimmers in low Reynolds number environments
• Optimal Strokes of Low Reynolds Number Linked-Sphere Swimmers
• Viscotaxis of chiral microswimmer in viscosity gradients
• How flagellated bacteria wobble
• A swimming bacterium in a two-fluid model of a polymer solution