The results of a study published this week suggest that microbes ‘feel’ their way along a solid surface, much as a blindfolded person would move near a wall.
Using high-speed microscopic imaging, University of Cambridge researchers have found that sperm cells accumulate at surfaces and algae move away from them as a result of contact between the surface and the cells’ flagella or cilia – the hair-like appendages that propel cells through their fluid environment.
Interactions between swimming cells and surfaces feature prominently in a wide range of microbiological processes, most importantly in the formation of bacterial films and during the fertilisation of the human egg. Yet, surprisingly little has been known about the physical mechanisms that govern the accumulation of microbes at surfaces.
The new experiments, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), were performed by Professor Raymond Goldstein’s group in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, and demonstrate how the interactions of microbes with solid surfaces are considerably more complex than previously thought.
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Image: Microswimmers
Credit: Vasily Kantsler and Raymond Goldstein
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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