Open AccessPeculiarities of Bacterial Chemotaxis in a Cylindrical Pore
Author(s) -
A. N. Vasiľev,
B. Y. Serhushev
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
ukrainian journal of physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.213
H-Index - 17
eISSN - 2071-0194
pISSN - 2071-0186
DOI - 10.15407/ujpe64.2.137
Subject(s) - chemotaxis , bacteria , radius , redistribution (election) , diffusion , concentration gradient , chemical physics , biophysics , chemistry , materials science , biology , physics , chromatography , thermodynamics , biochemistry , receptor , politics , computer science , political science , law , genetics , computer security
The process of bacterial redistribution in a cylindrical pore filled with an attractant has been considered. The attractant concentration decreases linearly along the pore, and the redistribution of bacteria occurs due to their diffusion (the motion of bacteria along the gradient of their concentration) and chemotaxis (the motion of bacteria along the gradient of attractant concentration). The influence of a spatial confinement on the bacterial distribution in the pore is analyzed. It is shown that if the pore wall is “repelling” for bacteria, the spatial confinement can change the bacterial distribution. In particular, as the pore radius decreases, the chemotaxic effect becomes weaker. The non-uniformity of a bacterial distribution in the system is estimated. The chemotaxis sensitivity function (the deviation of the ratio between the local average bacterial concentration and the average bacterial concentration over the whole system from unity) is calculated, and its dependence on the attractant concentration at the system ends and on the pore size is determined.