Live from under the lens: exploring microbial motility with dynamic imaging and microfluidics

Son, Kwangmin; Brumley, Douglas R.; Stocker, Roman

doi:10.1038/nrmicro3567

Cited by 121 publications

(91 citation statements)

References 96 publications

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“…As new tools continually improve our ability to observe bacterial behaviors, it is becoming evermore clear that bacterial motility and chemotaxis are widespread in many marine habitats (Stocker and Seymour, 2012;Son et al, 2015). The marine environment is a heterogeneous landscape at the microscale and a bacterium's ability to accurately navigate gradients of nutrients and infochemicals may provide it with a competitive advantage (Taylor and Stocker 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temperature-induced behavioral switches in a bacterial coral pathogen

et al. 2015

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Evidence to date indicates that elevated seawater temperatures increase the occurrence of coral disease, which is frequently microbial in origin. Microbial behaviors such as motility and chemotaxis are often implicated in coral colonization and infection, yet little is known about the effect of warming temperatures on these behaviors. Here we present data demonstrating that increasing water temperatures induce two behavioral switches in the coral pathogen Vibrio coralliilyticus that considerably augment the bacterium's performance in tracking the chemical signals of its coral host, Pocillopora damicornis. Coupling field-based heat-stress manipulations with laboratory-based observations in microfluidic devices, we recorded the swimming behavior of thousands of individual pathogen cells at different temperatures, associated with current and future climate scenarios. When temperature reached ⩾ 23°C, we found that the pathogen's chemotactic ability toward coral mucus increased by 460%, denoting an enhanced capability to track host-derived chemical cues. Raising the temperature further, to 30°C, increased the pathogen's chemokinetic ability by 457%, denoting an enhanced capability of cells to accelerate in favorable, mucus-rich chemical conditions. This work demonstrates that increasing temperature can have strong, multifarious effects that enhance the motile behaviors and host-seeking efficiency of a marine bacterial pathogen.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temperature-induced behavioral switches in a bacterial coral pathogen

et al. 2015

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“…In particular, chemotaxis (that is, the movement of organisms either toward or away from specific chemicals) (1, 2) is possibly the most common strategy adopted by many unicellular organisms to gather nutrients, escape toxins (3), and help coordinate collective behaviors such as the formation of colonies and biofilms (4). Chemotaxis is also exploited by multicellular systems for tissue development (5), immune responses (6), or cancer metastasis (7).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chemotactic synthetic vesicles: design and applications in blood brain barrier crossing

Joseph

Contini

Cecchin

et al. 2016

Preprint

114

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In recent years, scientists have created artificial microscopic and nanoscopic self-propelling particles, often referred to as nano-or microswimmers, capable of mimicking biological locomotion and taxis. This active diffusion enables the engineering of complex operations that so far have not been possible at the micro-and nanoscale. One of the most promising tasks is the ability to engineer nanocarriers that can autonomously navigate within tissues and organs, accessing nearly every site of the human body guided by endogenous chemical gradients. We report a fully synthetic, organic, nanoscopic system that exhibits attractive chemotaxis driven by enzymatic conversion of glucose. We achieve this by encapsulating glucose oxidase alone or in combination with catalase into nanoscopic and biocompatible asymmetric polymer vesicles (known as polymersomes). We show that these vesicles self-propel in response to an external gradient of glucose by inducing a slip velocity on their surface, which makes them move in an extremely sensitive way toward higher-concentration regions. We finally demonstrate that the chemotactic behavior of these nanoswimmers, in combination with LRP-1 (low-density lipoprotein receptor-related protein 1) targeting, enables a fourfold increase in penetration to the brain compared to nonchemotactic systems.

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“…Regarding the swimming characteristics of motile phytoplankton, there have been various theoretical, numerical and experimental studies (Durham et al 2009(Durham et al , 2013Pedley et al 1988;Pedley and Kessler 1990;Son et al 2015), with focus on the swimming behaviors of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii (Martin et al 2016;Sineshchekov et al 2000), Chlamydomonas nivalis (Hill and Häder 1997), Heterosigma akashiwo (Durham et al 2009(Durham et al , 2013 and Volvox (Drescher et al 2009;Goldstein 2015). Two types of models, i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Swimming characteristics of gyrotactic microorganisms in low-Reynolds-number flow: Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

Chen

Zeng

et al. 2017

Energ. Ecol. Environ.

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The swimming characteristics of gyrotactic microorganisms are significant to understand the ecological activities in lakes, rivers and oceans. The swimming velocity of a typical motile microorganism, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, was measured for both still water and low-Reynolds-number flow, based on a microfluidic system. Results show that the swimming speed is subject to Gaussian distribution for the still water, and corresponding mean swimming speed is 41 lm/s. The streamwise mean swimming velocity, 35 lm/s, in the moving water is slightly less than that in the still water. It is also shown that the swimming direction in the horizontal plane is dominated by cell randomness for the still water, and 80% of the cells are aligned with the ambient flow when the flow velocity exceeds 333 lm/s. The standard deviation of swimming direction and the percent of swimming direction in the streamwise direction can reach a stable status with the increase of the flow velocity.

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Live from under the lens: exploring microbial motility with dynamic imaging and microfluidics

Cited by 121 publications

References 96 publications

Temperature-induced behavioral switches in a bacterial coral pathogen

Temperature-induced behavioral switches in a bacterial coral pathogen

Chemotactic synthetic vesicles: design and applications in blood brain barrier crossing

Swimming characteristics of gyrotactic microorganisms in low-Reynolds-number flow: Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

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