Chemotaxis of bio-hybrid multiple bacteria-driven microswimmers
2016
Article
pi
In this study, in a bio-hybrid microswimmer system driven by multiple Serratia marcescens bacteria, we quantify the chemotactic drift of a large number of microswimmers towards L-serine and elucidate the associated collective chemotaxis behavior by statistical analysis of over a thousand swimming trajectories of the microswimmers. The results show that the microswimmers have a strong heading preference for moving up the L-serine gradient, while their speed does not change considerably when moving up and down the gradient; therefore, the heading bias constitutes the major factor that produces the chemotactic drift. The heading direction of a microswimmer is found to be significantly more persistent when it moves up the L-serine gradient than when it travels down the gradient; this effect causes the apparent heading preference of the microswimmers and is the crucial reason that enables the seemingly cooperative chemotaxis of multiple bacteria on a microswimmer. In addition, we find that their chemotactic drift velocity increases superquadratically with their mean swimming speed, suggesting that chemotaxis of bio-hybrid microsystems can be enhanced by designing and building faster microswimmers. Such bio-hybrid microswimmers with chemotactic steering capability may find future applications in targeted drug delivery, bioengineering, and lab-on-a-chip devices.
Author(s): | Zhuang, Jiang and Sitti, Metin |
Journal: | Scientific reports |
Volume: | 6 |
Number (issue): | 1 |
Pages: | 1--10 |
Year: | 2016 |
Department(s): | Physical Intelligence |
Research Project(s): |
Bacteria-powered biohybrid microswimmers
|
Bibtex Type: | Article (article) |
Paper Type: | Journal |
DOI: | 10.1038/srep32135 |
BibTex @article{zhuang2016chemotaxis, title = {Chemotaxis of bio-hybrid multiple bacteria-driven microswimmers}, author = {Zhuang, Jiang and Sitti, Metin}, journal = {Scientific reports}, volume = {6}, number = {1}, pages = {1--10}, year = {2016}, doi = {10.1038/srep32135} } |