Motile Behavior of Bacteria

© 2000 American Institute of Physics, S-0031-9228-0001-010-3 E coli is a singlecelled organism that lives in your gut. It is equipped with a set of rotary motors only 45 nm in diameter. Each motor drives a long, thin, helical filament that extends several cell body lengths out into the external medium. The assemblage of motor and filament is called a flagellum. The concerted motion of several flagella enables a cell to swim. A cell can move toward regions that it deems more favorable by measuring changes in the concentrations of certain chemicals in its environment (mostly nutrients), deciding whether life is getting better or worse, and then modulating the direction of rotation of its flagella. Thus, in addition to rotary engines and propellers, E. coli’s standard accessories include particle counters, rate meters, and gear boxes. This microorganism is a nanotechnologist’s dream. I will discuss the features that make it so, from the perspectives of several scientific disciplines: anatomy, genetics, chemistry, and physics. What made work on the behavior of E. coli possible? The tale has two geneses. One involves light microscopy and begins in the 17th century, when Antony van Leeuwenhoek first observed swimming bacteria.1 (See box 1 on page 26.) The other involves molecular genetics and begins in the 20th century, when Joshua Lederberg demonstrated that bacteria have sex, as evidenced by their genetic recombination.2 (See box 2 on page 28.) Lederberg studied E. coli and Salmonella typhimurium, two closely related organisms. They are the principal subjects of work now being done on bacterial chemotaxis (the motion of bacteria toward chemical attractants or away from chemical repellents). That work has yielded an important model for understanding the behavior of cells at the molecular level.