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One striking feature of bacterial motion is their ability to swim upstreamalong corners and crevices, by leveraging hydrodynamic interactions. Thismotion through anatomic ducts or medical devices might be at the origin ofserious infections. However, it remains unclear how bacteria can maintainpersistent upstream motion while exhibiting run-and-tumble dynamics. Here wedemonstrate that E. coli can travel upstream in microfluidic devices overdistances of 15 millimeters in times as short as 15 minutes. Using a stochasticmodel relating the run times to the time bacteria spend on surfaces, wequantitatively reproduce the evolution of the contamination profiles whenconsidering a broad distribution of run times. Interestingly, the experimentaldata cannot be reproduced using the usually accepted exponential distributionof run times. Our study demonstrates that the run-and-tumble statisticsdetermine macroscopic bacterial transport properties. This effect, that we name"super-contamination", could explain the fast onset of some life-threateningmedical emergencies.

E. coli "super-contaminates" narrow ducts fostered by broad run-time distribution