Bacterial Electrophysiology.

Bacterial ion fluxes are involved in the generation of energy, transport, and motility. As such, bacterial electrophysiology is fundamentally important for the bacterial life cycle, but it is often neglected and consequently, by and large, not understood. Arguably, the two main reasons for this are the complexity of measuring relevant variables in small cells with a cell envelope that contains the cell wall and the fact that, in a unicellular organism, relevant variables become intertwined in a nontrivial manner. To help give bacterial electrophysiology studies a firm footing, in this review, we go back to basics. We look first at the biophysics of bacterial membrane potential, and then at the approaches and models developed mostly for the study of neurons and eukaryotic mitochondria. We discuss their applicability to bacterial cells. Finally, we connect bacterial membrane potential with other relevant (electro)physiological variables and summarize methods that can be used to both measure and influence bacterial electrophysiology.

Unified biophysical mechanism for cell-shape oscillations and cell ingression.

We describe a mechanochemical and percolation cascade that augments myosin's regulatory network to tune cytoskeletal forces. Actomyosin forces collectively generate cytoskeletal forces during cell oscillations and ingression, which we quantify by elastic percolation of the internally driven, cross-linked actin network. Contractile units can produce relatively large, oscillatory forces that disrupt crosslinks to reduce cytoskeletal forces. A (reverse) Hopf bifurcation switches contractile units to produce smaller, steady forces that enhance crosslinking and consequently boost cytoskeletal forces to promote ingression. We describe cell-shape changes and cell ingression in terms of intercellular force imbalances along common cell junctions.

Frequent pauses in Escherichia coli flagella elongation revealed by single cell real-time fluorescence imaging.

The bacterial flagellum is a large extracellular protein organelle that extrudes from the cell surface. The flagellar filament is assembled from tens of thousands of flagellin subunits that are exported through the flagellar type III secretion system. Here, we measure the growth of Escherichia coli flagella in real time and find that, although the growth rate displays large variations at similar lengths, it decays on average as flagella lengthen. By tracking single flagella, we show that the large variations in growth rate occur as a result of frequent pauses. Furthermore, different flagella on the same cell show variable growth rates with correlation. Our observations are consistent with an injection-diffusion model, and we propose that an insufficient cytoplasmic flagellin supply is responsible for the pauses in flagellar growth in E. coli.

Dynamics of self-organized rotating spiral-coils in bacterial swarms.

Self-propelled particles (SPP) exhibit complex collective motions, mimicking autonomous behaviors that are often seen in the natural world, but essentially are generated by simple mutual interactions. Previous research on SPP systems focuses on collective behaviors of a uniform population. However, very little is known about the evolution of individual particles under the same global influence. Here we show self-organized rotating spiral coils in a two-dimensional (2D) active system. By using swarming bacteria Vibrio alginolyticus as an ideal experimental realization of a well-controlled 2D self-propelled system, we study the interaction between ultra-long cells and short background active cells. The self-propulsion of long cells and their interactions with neighboring short cells leads to a self-organized, stable spiral rotational state in 2D. We find four types of spiral coils with two main features: the rotating direction (clockwise or counter-clockwise) and the central structure (single or double spiral). The body length of the spiral coils falls between 32 and 296 µm and their rotational speed is within a range from 2.22 to 22.96 rad s(-1). The dynamics of these spiral coils involves folding and unfolding processes, which require local velocity changes of the long bacterium. This phenomenon can be qualitatively replicated by a Brownian dynamics simulation using a simple rule of the propulsion thrust, imitating the reorientation of bacterial flagella. Apart from the physical and biological interests in swarming cells, the formation of self-organized spiral coils could be useful for the next generation of microfabrication.

Stretching and migration of DNA by solvent elasticity in an oscillatory flow.

A model with solution viscoelasticity is proposed to explain the ratchetlike stretching of DNA by a symmetric ac electric field in polymer solutions. In this model, DNA is stretched by the interaction between the fluid elasticity and the oscillatory flow induced by DNA. Predictions of the model are confirmed by DNA stretching experiments performed in various polymer solutions and the corresponding rheological measurements of the solutions. In particular, experiments have verified that a net migration of stretched DNA in polymer solutions can be induced by a zero-mean asymmetric ac electric field. This last finding cannot be explained by other existing models.