Swimming Escherichia coli explore the environment by L évy walk.

Swimming Escherichia coli explore the environment by Lévy walk. Appl Environ Microbiol. 2021 Jan 08;: Authors: Huo H, He R, Zhang R, Yuan J Abstract E. coli cells swim in aqueous environment in a random walk of alternating runs and tumbles. The diffusion characteristics of this random walk remains unclear. Here, by tracking the swimming of wildtype cells in a 3d homogeneous environment, we found that their trajectories are super diffusive, consistent with Lévy walk behavior. For comparison, we tracked the swimming of mutant cells that lack the chemotaxis signaling noise (the steady-state fluctuation of the concentration of the chemotaxis response regulator CheY-P), and found that their trajectories are normal diffusive. Therefore, wildtype E. coli cells explore the environment by Lévy walk, which originates from the chemotaxis signaling noise. This Lévy walk pattern enhances their efficiency in environmental exploration.Importance E. coli cells explore the environment in a random walk of alternating runs and tumbles. By tracking the 3d trajectories of E. coli cells in aqueous environment, we find that their trajectories are super diffusive, with a power-law shape for the distribution of run lengths, which is characteristics of Lévy walk. We further show that this Lévy walk behavior is due to the random fluctuation of the output level of the bacterial chemotaxis pathway, and it enhances the efficiency of the bacteria in explorin...
Source: Applied and Environmental Microbiology - Category: Microbiology Authors: Tags: Appl Environ Microbiol Source Type: research