Optimality and constraints of bacterial motility strategies
Bacterial motility
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Many bacteria are motile and follow trajectories that exhibit distinct reorientation events like the classic run-and-tumble behavior of E. coli shown here.
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What causes the natural diversity of bacterial motility strategies?
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Different species show different motility patterns. Why is that? We would like to understand whether the differences observed in nature reflect different physical constraints or adaptations to specific ecological requirements.
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Example trajectories from six different bacterial species. From Taute et al,, Nat. Comm. 6:8776, 2015.
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Tracking bacteria in 3D
We obtain 3D trajectories for swimming bacteria using a novel 3D tracking method that only requires a standard biological phase contrast microscope.
From Taute et al,, Nat. Comm. 6:8776, 2015.
From Taute et al,, Nat. Comm. 6:8776, 2015.
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Bacteria are tracked by computationally comparing their diffraction rings to a reference library. The ring pattern encodes the z-position.
From Taute et al,, Nat. Comm. 6:8776, 2015. . |
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Dozens of bacteria can be tracked simultaneously across a field of view spanning hundreds of micrometers in all 3 dimensions.
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