Instability of waves formed by motile bacteria

Many motile chemotactic bacteria (for instance, Escherichia coli) inoculated at some point in a semisolid nutrient medium can form circular expanding population waves. The formation of these motile structures is due chemotaxis. The circular waves originate from an expanding bacterial lawn (a parent...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:FEMS microbiology letters 1993-09, Vol.112 (3), p.287-290
Main Authors: Medvinsky, A.B., Tsyganov, M.A., Kutyshenko, V.P., Shakhbazian, V.Yu, Kresteva, I.B., Ivanitsky, G.R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cell Division
Chemotaxis - physiology
Escherichia coli
Escherichia coli - cytology
Escherichia coli - physiology
Models, Biological
Motility
Population waves
Stability
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Many motile chemotactic bacteria (for instance, Escherichia coli) inoculated at some point in a semisolid nutrient medium can form circular expanding population waves. The formation of these motile structures is due chemotaxis. The circular waves originate from an expanding bacterial lawn (a parent population). The regular shape of these waves results from the isotropic distribution of freely diffusible nutrient molecules which are also attractants. In this paper we show that the regular shape of the bacterial population waves can be spontaneously disturbed. As this takes place arc‐shaped population waves (‘bursts’) are formed. It was found that initially the mean length of the cells forming the bursts was greater than that of the parent cell population. But then it decreased resulting in a value characteristic of the parent population.
ISSN:0378-1097
1574-6968
DOI:10.1111/j.1574-6968.1993.tb06464.x